Youtube comments of Digital Nomad (@digitalnomad9985).
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@suntzu94 It was in part thanks to the public traditions we got from Britain that we were able to part company with King George without France's reign of terror, and kept much of the common law precedent instead of having something like the Napoleonic Code. And it was the French monarchy that helped us gain independence, not the French Republic (any of them), though certainly Lafayette had general revolutionary or at least reform notions when he served in the Continental Army. It can hardly be maintained that the elimination of the French monarchy IMMEDIATELY brought about an improvement and advancement of liberty in France or in Europe, much less that it did us any tangible good. And the revolutionary government imprisoned Lafayette and Thomas Paine. While Napoleon conveniently sold us the Louisiana Purchase, he is hardly the champion of liberty he cosplayed as (when he wasn't cosplaying as emperor).
Certainly the ideas behind the US Constitution in general and the Bill of Rights in particular find their source in the traditions of the rights of Englishmen, the Magna Carta, and English common law, though I assert we helped the tradition along. If we hadn't provided a relatively benign example of representative government, the UK might well have reacted differently to the French Revolution, if any.
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@robg4472 Hollywood figures and other leftist celebs: Sean Penn, Oliver Stone, Kevin Spacey, Danny Glover, Susan Sarandon, Benicio del Toro, Don King, Michael Moore
Political figures: Gregory Meeks, Jesse Jackson, Bernie Sanders, Al Franken, Chesa Boudin
Democratic Reps. Ilhan Omar, Ro Khanna and Tulsi Gabbard have mischaracterized the protests against Maduro and condemned President Donald Trump’s widely supported moves to help end Maduro’s dictatorship.
Is this news to you? Chavez/Maduro has fallen out of fashion recently, but they were all the rage at least up to the time Chavez died, with many celebs attending the funeral. An electorate that forgets on command is not conducive to the preservation of freedom.
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"Battleships were obsolete"
They were no longer the top surface combatants, but they were most efficient at providing cheap fire support to invasions and coastal flanks up to 20+ miles inland. Indeed, in every major conflict from the end of WW2 (Korea, Vietnam) to Operation Desert Storm, a WW2 BB or 2 were brought out of mothballs to support ground operations with naval gunfire, which is cheaper than air strikes, (both financially and logistically) even when you don't lose any aircraft. All good things must come to an end, but the Marines miss them already, and will continue to do so until the Navy can deploy rail guns, or something of the sort, to support ground operations.
And more carriers would not have helped without more carrier aircraft to arm them and more pilots to man them. Not everybody is cut out to be a carrier pilot. Capital ship production may be fungible, but it isn't interchangeable with aircraft production. Both were at capacity at the time.
Also, this vid mentions in passing the Battle of Surigao Strait, where for perhaps the last time in history a naval line of battle "crosses the T" of an enemy battle line and destroys it. This is a decisive battle because the battleships prevented the Japanese Navy from achieving its overall objective, the destruction of the troop transports and the beachhead, which the Japanese Southern Force battleships could have accomplished on its own if not checked.
Concerning the Central Force/Taffy engagnement, the Japanese commander should not have disengaged when he did; not only because he was wrong about facing fleet carriers, he should not have withdrawn even if he WAS facing fleet carriers. When a WW2 battleship force manages to bring enemy WW2 carriers into VISUAL range (which they could not ordinarily have done to these small carriers except for the Taffy task force's need to draw the Japanese away from the transports and the beach) ALL of the advantages of the carrier over the battleship are negated, and as long as they can be held in visual range the battleship holds the whip. The carrier has the advantage of air recon and air superiority to deny a battleship's spotter plane their air recon, and also the striking range advantage. In open sea, so long as a carrier has planes left and room to maneuver, the carrier CAN find and (usually) strike the battleship and the battleship can do neither to the carrier. In visual range the recon and range advantages are lost, and armor and firepower come to the fore, checkmate blue. The Japanese fleet was under air attack, but leaving the Navy a deck to launch from only made his withdrawal more costly
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@southwestsaxon "and i can tell you this"
You can tell us this because of the freedom of speech in the British tradition. If you were living in the nations of your "parents country and heritage" you could not criticize it in that way.
"britains history and modern society is about EXTREME RACISM and IMPERIALISM." [sic]
It is only in the west in general, and the Anglosphere in particular, where the notion that racism is a bad thing has arose. In other cultures, it was not even recognized as a "thing" at all, good or bad. To look to the society that led the long crusade to end slavery as a bastion of racism and oppression is fundamentally absurd, as diametrically false as any statement uttered under the sun. The British partake of the vices that are the common condition of humanity. When this is coupled with power this WILL leave events that ill endure the light of historical inquiry. But the standards which you are using to judge those events are Western and British standards, which your parent culture would never have arrived at and under those same standards your parent culture fares far worse under historical judgement. When your parent culture obtained, and to this day when they obtain, power over other cultures what they have done, and continue to do, is far worse.
What the British and the west were most resented for in the Victorian era in your parent's neck of the woods is for abolishing slavery in the middle east. Like Neo-Confederate revisionists criticizing the Union and lionizing the Confederacy in the American Civil War, you try to sweep the slavery issue under the rug, and deny its centrality and relevance.
As for Western racism, again, "racism" is only a concept in the West and in places (like Japan) where western culture has influence. The rest of the world in general, and the Islamic world in particular routinely and openly oppress racial and religious minorities, and think nothing of it. This hypocrisy becomes elevated to a "principle" in modern leftist rhetoric when leftists say "Minorities can't be racist." The US is, in point of fact, the least racist multiracial society in the world, and has been at least since the 1970s. The most prevalent racism in the west is the PC racism promoted by the left, manifest in the US by a reversal of civil rights prohibition against segregation, for example. Your fondness for modern leftist rhetoric is a result of your falling into a trap that the modern left has set and baited for minorities. You are attracted by the sense of superiority the narrative gives you. This is a RACIST appeal. Intellectually, leftists can only give you what they have.
You have been welcomed to a great society. Seize and appreciate your good fortune with appropriate gratitude and loyalty. If the left succeeds in bringing the West down to the social level of your parent culture, as they seek to do, you will be very sorry, it will be too late, and there will be no place to escape to. Pray (and work) that this misfortune does not happen to you.
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@EdoardoB-xz1jp "Fascism and Socialism are two completely opposed ideologies."
They are two different flavors of socialism that vilify each other and pretend to constitute the political spectrum. Each tells the lie "If you're not one of us, you're one of them." All sane and decent folk are neither.
"The first uses a capitalist economic basis"
"Capitalism" is Marx's caricature of free market economics. Fascism is not free market economics.
"This is completely opposed to socialism in which the economic model is that of commonly owned means of production. There is no person making profits that is above the rest, or cutting costs by firing employees and leaving them to starve on the side of the road."
The whole economic system is run for the benefit and enrichment of the Nomenclatura. When you say "That's not real Communism", what you mean is it's not theoretical communism, a utopia that has never and can never exist.
"I think we should start with the basic definition of socialism."
The only practical definition (definition of a thing that has existed and can exist) of socialism is central control of the economy. "Common ownership" is invariably a window dressing for despotism. In fact, and historically in practice, despotism results, and the reason why IS AN INHERENT FLAW OF THE THEORY. You seek to replace the free market with an arbitrary distribution of stuff. To do this you need an arbiter. The arbiter does not BECOME, he IS by nature of his function, the dictator. In fact, this is recognized in the theory, "the dictatorship of the proletariat". You, first, remove all the protections, restraints, checks and balances of the civic society, (often accompanied by the removal of checks on the conscience from religion,) give absolute power (in a sense greater even than the kings and emperors of old) to a person or a group, already acclimated to a free hand in the use of force when they steal everybody's stuff. Then you wonder why so many get murdered by your just and equitable and scientific government, and why life in your utopia is so similar to slavery.
A common fallacy of utopian ideologues is that human nature is inherently good, and that the problems of the human condition are the result of some social construct, because we don't want to face the truth about ourselves. To the communist free markets; to the anarchist government; to the New Atheists religion, to primitivists agriculture or technology, to racists whites or blacks or Jews or whoever; is the root of all evil. The clear, harsh, intolerable, and absolutely vital and central essence of human nature is that WE ARE OUR PROBLEM, not any externality or construct. As the song says, "You can run from yourself, but you won't get far. 'Cause wherever you go --- There you are." This is the starting point of clarity in history, sociology, and psychiatry; every study which pertains to the nature of humanity. In fact, the same flawed, imperfect, selfish, stupid nature that infests the lord, or the "capitalist", infests the revolutionary. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The "capitalist" AS SUCH, can only hire or bribe. An unchecked authoritarian government can do that (with other people's money), plus arrest, torture, and kill you or your family. It is incoherent to fear the former and not fear the latter. No "angel" is available to bear this power benignly.
Socialism IS despotism, inherently, invariably, and unavoidably.
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bastiat4855 "86% of railroads in the USA before the civil war were in the south."
Rubbish. The north had 20K miles of railroad and the south had 9K. By "more railroads" do you mean "more railroad companies"? That's hardly an economic comparison. The standardization of US railroads by gauge, for instance was far from complete at the time of the American Civil War (or War Between the States, if you prefer). Balkanization of railroads by different companies often was accompanied by differences in gauge and lack of interconnection of roads of like gauge, so more rail companies meant less transportation mileage you cold cover without transferring freight to different rolling stock. This was less of a problem for passengers than for freight because passengers can walk from one train to another.
"culture and advancement" "profitable"
Plantation owners were more likely to send their sons to England for education. That hardly makes the south more wealthy as a whole. Also, being a southern cash crop plantation owner, if you had the stake to get into it, was like a license to print money, especially cotton in the latter part of the antebellum era. Having a few really rich folks doesn't necessarily make your society rich. The North had four times the GDP of the South. The North had 22 million people. The South had 9.5 million people, of which just under 4.0 million were slaves, so 5.5 million white people. If you divide the white populations, you get a four to one North/South ratio, the same as the GDP ratio. This means that the northern and southern per capital GDPs were equivalent, but only if you count the nearly 4.0 million black slaves as property, and their production as part of white per capita GDP. If you divide the South's GDP by all 9.5 million people, including blacks, the southern standard of living was on average, 61% of the northern.
It follows therefore, that the average white southerner who didn't own any slaves was much worse off than the average white northerner (who also didn't own any slaves). The North had a large middle class of professionals and artizans. The South did not. The second thing is the "nine tenths of the slaveholders" who had ONE slave were barely better off than the poor white farmers that had none.
The last question is how much a working class southerner's standard of living was below that of the average white northerner. Presumably, there was some "discount," but probably not all the way down to 61%. It made sense that he was better off than southern whites who owned 0 or even one slave. It was the large plantation owners with tens or hundreds of slaves that were wealthy. The South was a very unequal society, with 1%-2% of the people at the very top, and the rest below that of the northern "average." The "average" wealth of you and Bill Gates is in the billions.
The North had four times as many schools as the South, attended by more than four times as many students. Children in Massachusetts spent more than twice as many years in school as children in Virginia. Such disparities obviously produce other disparities. Northern newspapers had more than four times the circulation of Southern newspapers. Only 8% of the patents issued in 1851 went to Southerners. Even though agriculture was the principal economic activity of the antebellum South at the time, the vast majority of the patents for agricultural inventions went to Northerners. Even the cotton gin was invented by a Northerner.
The North had an enormous industrial advantage as well. At the beginning of the war, the Confederacy had only one-ninth the industrial capacity of the Union. But that statistic was misleading. In 1860, the North manufactured 97 percent of the country's firearms, 96 percent of its railroad locomotives, 94 percent of its cloth, 93 percent of its pig iron, and over 90 percent of its boots and shoes. The North had twice the density of railroads per square mile. There was not even one rifleworks in the entire South (though they made "manufactories" during the war.
The economic and social backwardness of the South compared to the North was commented on by northern and southern observers alike, as well as such impartial foreign observers as Alexis de Tocqueville. All one had to do was float down the Ohio and compare the northern bank with the southern, the difference was that striking. Having the war fought largely on southern soil, despite the tactical advantage that gave the south, did degrade the economic infrastructure of the South, as well as losing slavery as a staple of their economy, but they were already poorer before the war.
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@EdoardoB-xz1jp
All Fascists and Nazis are Leftists. Mussolini was an editor of a leftist paper. Prior to the war Mussolini and FDR, the progressive (which at the time meant socialism plus eugenics plus Jim Crow laws) were exchanging political love letters praising one another and also in the American and Italian press.
Mussolini and his party developed Fascism because Marx's predicted proletarian uprising, long overdue by Communist prediction, never happened. Mussolini noted that despite ideology, people still fought for their country, so he added ardent nationalism to socialism. Unlike the Nazis, there was nothing acutely racial about Mussolini's nationalism (he was not anti-semitic, for example). When he took power he got a congratulatory telegram from Lenin for being a leftist leader who took control of Italy.
Hitler made no bones about being a leftist:
#1. “I have learned a great deal from Marxism” … “as I do not hesitate to admit”
#2. [My task is to] “convert the German volk (people) to socialism without simply killing off the old individualists”
#3. “If we are socialists, then we must definitely be anti-semites – and the opposite, in that case, is Materialism and Mammonism, which we seek to oppose.” “How, as a socialist, can you not be an anti-semite?”
#4. We must “find and travel the road from individualism to socialism without revolution”.
#5. “Why need we trouble to socialize banks and factories? We socialize human beings.”
#6. “We are socialists, we are enemies of today’s capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions” 1927
#7. “What Marxism, Leninism and Stalinism failed to accomplish we shall be in a position to achieve.”
Select planks from the Nazi party platform:
7. We demand that the State make it its duty to provide opportunities of employment first of all for its own Citizens. If it is not possible to maintain the entire population of the State, then foreign nationals (non-Citizens) are to be expelled from the Reich.
9. All German Citizens must have equal rights and duties.
10. It must be the first duty of every Citizen to carry out intellectual or physical work. Individual activity must not be harmful to the public interest and must be pursued within the framework of the community and for the general good.
We therefore demand:
11. The abolition of all income obtained without labor or effort.
Breaking the Servitude of Interest.
12. In view of the tremendous sacrifices in property and blood demanded of the nation by every war, personal gain from the war must be termed a crime against the nation. We therefore demand the total confiscation of all war profits.
13. We demand the nationalization of all enterprises (already) converted into corporations (trusts).
14. We demand profit-sharing in large enterprises.
15. We demand the large-scale development of old-age pension schemes.
16. We demand the creation and maintenance of a sound middle class; the immediate communalization of the large department stores, which are to be leased at low rates to small tradesmen. We demand the most careful consideration for the owners of small businesses in orders placed by national, state, or community authorities.
17. We demand land reform in accordance with our national needs and a law for expropriation without compensation of land for public purposes. Abolition of ground rent and prevention of all speculation in land.
18. We demand ruthless battle against those who harm the common good by their activities. Persons committing base crimes against the People, usurers, profiteers, etc., are to be punished by death without regard to religion or race.
20. In order to make higher education – and thereby entry into leading positions – available to every able and industrious German, the State must provide a thorough restructuring of our entire public educational system. The courses of study at all educational institutions are to be adjusted to meet the requirements of practical life. Understanding of the concept of the State must be achieved through the schools (teaching of civics) at the earliest age at which it can be grasped. We demand the education at the public expense of specially gifted children of poor parents, without regard to the latters’ position or occupation.
21. The State must raise the level of national health by means of mother-and-child care, the banning of juvenile labor, achievements of physical fitness through legislation for compulsory gymnastics and sports, and maximum support for all organizations providing physical training for young people.
25. To carry out all the above we demand: the creation of a strong central authority in the Reich. Unquestioned authority by the political central Parliament over the entire Reich and over its organizations in general. The establishment of trade and professional organizations to enforce the Reich basic laws in the individual states.
/ end citation
The early (pre-Holocaust) laws relegating Jews to second-class citizens were copied wholesale from the "Progressive" Jim Crow laws of the American South.
Stalin not only entered into a non-aggression pact with Hitler, he joined him in the conquest of Poland and gave him material and propaganda support until Hitler betrayed him with Operation Barbarossa. Stalin considered the liberal west the greater threat ideologically.
At the time, everybody considered Fascism and Nazism to be part of the left. After the war, when the Nazis had made eugenics unfashionable, the left exerted its propaganda power to attribute Fascism and Nazism to the right. The notion that Fascism is not leftist is historical revisionism.
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@worldoftancraft
What a paradoxical view of history you have. By the time the Battle of Stalingrad had even begun, the US and UK were already shipping aid in bulk to the Soviet Union, mostly food a first, but constantly trucks and fuel, shipped in by Anglo-American convoys fighting through the German attempt at blockade. The defenders of Stalingrad almost starved as it was, and would certainly have starved without that aid.
By the time the USSR had turned to the offensive, The US had been supplying, and continued to supply, Sherman tanks in vast numbers to all the allies including the Soviet Union. The UK also supplied the USSR with some tanks. The US and the UK also supplied the Soviets with combat and logistics aircraft. 90% of the trucks supporting the Soviet offensive logistical effort were Studebaker trucks shipped in from US factories, and the bulk of the fuel was from the US as well. Without that aid the Soviet offensive would not have been possible logistically or materially.
Shortly after the US declaration of war, the US sent ground forces to aid the British effort to push the Axis powers out of Northern Africa. In November of 1942, the US opened an African front of its own in Operation Torch. The Anglo-American offensive pushed the Axis out of Africa, and deprived them of their main source of oil. This began well before the end of the Stalingrad battle and the start of the Soviet offensive, and paved the way for the subsequent Anglo-American invasions of Sicily and Italy, which took Italy out of the war. This also caused Hitler to divert forces from his eastern to his southern front during the pivotal period.
--But "The USSR defeated Germany single handed."
Now the West sends Ukraine a few weapons, ammo, and some humanitarian aid.
--and Russia boasts of fighting NATO.
Do you not see the inconsistency?
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@tobystewart4724 "subject to random price fluctuations and where I'm taxed by the drop"
The very policies you are supporting are responsible for much of the price fluctuations and all the extra taxes. Or did you think you were paying the taxes to the oil companies? You think subsidies are better than taxes? You are still paying for the whole shebang and losing value and autonomy to boot. Right now it's the fossil fuel taxes that are funding the "renewable" subsidies. If they get cut off, you will either see what the "renewable energy" really costs, or you will be taxed somewhere else, or you will pay via inflation as they print "money". If you think price fluctuations are fun, get a load of SUPPLY fluctuations, that's a whole new level of fun, and inherent to most "renewables" WHEN THEY'RE WORKING, and they are less mechanically reliable (particularly wind) because the tech is new and, frankly, experimental; and because renewable companies are environmental heroes to whom responsibility can never be imputed. We're already beginning to get a taste of that fun, and given the lead time on grid infrastructure, it WILL get worse before it gets better, even if policies improve immediately. Don't you love it when a plan comes together?
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@takkiejakkie5458 "Racism/classism/imperialism/dumb religious beliefs etc. etc."
Wow, what a diametric historical inversion! Racism, classism, and imperialism are only ever considered problematic in a Western context, that is because the West, AND ONLY THE WEST, (as a legacy of Christendom) is progressing past them. Elsewhere and elsewhen, they are endemic and taken for granted.
Protestantism created the modern libertarian west. We (Protestants) implemented religious freedom, political freedom, academic freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press FIRST, and thus caused the academic, scientific, technological, and material progress that followed; and most of the rest of the world hasn't caught up with it yet. John 8:32 "You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
When you attack the religious and ethical legacy of Athens and Jerusalem, you undermine the basis of your privileged starting point, and the moral basis for criticizing racism/classism/imperialism. These ills are greatly diminished in the West because of the Protestant legacy. If the wolves succeed in destroying the vestiges of Christianity, the ubiquity of racism/classism/imperialism will once again reassert itself, as it does invariably outside.
But it is historically unlikely that they will thus succeed. The Romans tried to wipe us out. The Huns tried to wipe us out. The Islamic Caliphate tried to wipe us out. The Pope tried to wipe us out. The Nazis planned to wipe us out if they won the war. The Soviets and their empire tried to wipe us out. We're still here. It's the anvil, you see, that wears out the hammers; not the other way around.
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@michaelhorn6029 "Are all land reform efforts Communist in nature or Communist inspired? When the major land owners in a poor country want to stop land reform they would go to the US State Department and say"
That went more often the other way. "Mao isn't a Stalinist he's an 'agrarian reformer' ". Same thing about Castro. Every new socialist authoritarian is something entirely new. We can't learn from the past because there IS NO PAST. Irrationally, we are reassured every time that there can be a benign redistributionist Socialism, and every time those who listen are fooled.
"So what was the point of overthrowing them fifty years ago?"
1. Fifty years of staving off totalitarianism. A lifetime of difference for somebody who lives a long way away from you whom you don't care about.
2. Winning the global struggle against communism.
"Is law and order restored to these places? Or were our anti-communist foreign policies only good for fighting Communism and bad in every other way."
Inefficient non-alligned authoritarianism is less odious and less stable than international Communism, and it poses less of a threat to the world at large. Sometimes when we help a country fight communism we get Guatemala, sometimes we get South Korea. Thwarting a homicidal, slandering global conspiracy against mankind is a good thing, all other things being equal. Nation building abroad is not so much. We can't force the formation of a libertarian democracy. We can sometimes keep our allies and co-belligerents from being overwhelmed by a powerful mutual enemy. You can be sure our major enemies are willing to make deals with local regimes without a litmus test of ideological purity. There is no substitute for winning.
In trying to maintain freedom against communism, global jihad, and the like we're not going to hold together a winning coalition without credibility. The nonaligned over which we are competing are often compelled to ask of us not just, "Are they a dependable ally?", but "Are they even trying to win?".
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All Fascists and Nazis are Leftists. Mussolini was an editor of a leftist paper. Prior to the war Mussolini and FDR, the progressive (which at the time meant socialism plus eugenics plus Jim Crow laws) were exchanging political love letters praising one another and also in the American and Italian press.
Mussolini and his party developed Fascism because Marx's predicted proletarian uprising, long overdue by Communist prediction, never happened. Mussolini noted that despite ideology, people still fought for their country, so he added ardent nationalism to socialism. Unlike the Nazis, there was nothing acutely racial about Mussolini's nationalism (he was not anti-semitic, for example). When he took power he got a congratulatory telegram from Lenin for being a leftist leader who took control of Italy.
Hitler made no bones about being a leftist:
#1. “I have learned a great deal from Marxism” … “as I do not hesitate to admit”
#2. [My task is to] “convert the German volk (people) to socialism without simply killing off the old individualists”
#3. “If we are socialists, then we must definitely be anti-semites – and the opposite, in that case, is Materialism and Mammonism, which we seek to oppose.” “How, as a socialist, can you not be an anti-semite?”
#4. We must “find and travel the road from individualism to socialism without revolution”.
#5. “Why need we trouble to socialize banks and factories? We socialize human beings.”
#6. “We are socialists, we are enemies of today’s capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions” 1927
#7. “What Marxism, Leninism and Stalinism failed to accomplish we shall be in a position to achieve.”
Select planks from the Nazi party platform:
7. We demand that the State make it its duty to provide opportunities of employment first of all for its own Citizens. If it is not possible to maintain the entire population of the State, then foreign nationals (non-Citizens) are to be expelled from the Reich.
9. All German Citizens must have equal rights and duties.
10. It must be the first duty of every Citizen to carry out intellectual or physical work. Individual activity must not be harmful to the public interest and must be pursued within the framework of the community and for the general good.
We therefore demand:
11. The abolition of all income obtained without labor or effort.
Breaking the Servitude of Interest.
12. In view of the tremendous sacrifices in property and blood demanded of the nation by every war, personal gain from the war must be termed a crime against the nation. We therefore demand the total confiscation of all war profits.
13. We demand the nationalization of all enterprises (already) converted into corporations (trusts).
14. We demand profit-sharing in large enterprises.
15. We demand the large-scale development of old-age pension schemes.
16. We demand the creation and maintenance of a sound middle class; the immediate communalization of the large department stores, which are to be leased at low rates to small tradesmen. We demand the most careful consideration for the owners of small businesses in orders placed by national, state, or community authorities.
17. We demand land reform in accordance with our national needs and a law for expropriation without compensation of land for public purposes. Abolition of ground rent and prevention of all speculation in land.
18. We demand ruthless battle against those who harm the common good by their activities. Persons committing base crimes against the People, usurers, profiteers, etc., are to be punished by death without regard to religion or race.
20. In order to make higher education – and thereby entry into leading positions – available to every able and industrious German, the State must provide a thorough restructuring of our entire public educational system. The courses of study at all educational institutions are to be adjusted to meet the requirements of practical life. Understanding of the concept of the State must be achieved through the schools (teaching of civics) at the earliest age at which it can be grasped. We demand the education at the public expense of specially gifted children of poor parents, without regard to the latters’ position or occupation.
21. The State must raise the level of national health by means of mother-and-child care, the banning of juvenile labor, achievements of physical fitness through legislation for compulsory gymnastics and sports, and maximum support for all organizations providing physical training for young people.
25. To carry out all the above we demand: the creation of a strong central authority in the Reich. Unquestioned authority by the political central Parliament over the entire Reich and over its organizations in general. The establishment of trade and professional organizations to enforce the Reich basic laws in the individual states.
/ end citation
The early (pre-Holocaust) laws relegating Jews to second-class citizens were copied wholesale from the "Progressive" Jim Crow laws of the American South.
Stalin not only entered into a non-aggression pact with Hitler, he joined him in the conquest of Poland and gave him material and propaganda support until Hitler betrayed him with Operation Barbarossa. Stalin considered the liberal west the greater threat ideologically.
At the time, everybody considered Fascism and Nazism to be part of the left. After the war, when the Nazis had made eugenics unfashionable, the left exerted its propaganda power to attribute Fascism and Nazism to the right. The notion that Fascism is not leftist is historical revisionism.
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If you will tolerate my repost from above, I hope that those interested in this thread might find this of interest as well:
55:44 About the heresy criticism. JP-paraphrase"God's grace enables us, but we still have to do the work. How can both of these be true simultaneously? And the answer depends on your view of time." As a believer, I agree, and so did C.S. Lewis.
About heresy. The Bible is full of paradoxes, (Jesus was human and divine, the Godhead is Three and One, etc.) and one of the most common forms heresy takes is to "resolve" the paradox by denying one side of the paradox to uphold the other. Exhortations to moral purity abound in both the Old and New Testaments, as does the assertion that we are empowered to do good by grace. If moral exhortation (or even moral exhortation without immediately invoking grace) is heresy, then the New Testament is full of heresy. The paradox is perhaps most starkly stated in:
Phil 2:12 So then, my beloved, even as you have always obeyed, not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.
Phil 2:13 For it is God who works in you both to will and to work, for his good pleasure.
C.S. Lewis:
“On Calvinism, both the statement that our final destination is already settled and the view that it still may be either Heaven or hell, seem to me to imply the ultimate reality of Time, which I don’t believe in. The controversy is one I can’t join on either side for I think that in the real (timeless) world it is meaningless…All that Calvinist question — Free-Will and Predestination, is to my mind undiscussable, insoluble. Of course (say us) if a man repents God will accept him. Ah yes, (say they) but the fact of his repenting shows that God has already moved him to do so. This at any rate leaves us with the fact that in any concrete case the question never arrives as a practical one. But I suspect it is really a meaningless question. The difference between Freedom and Necessity is fairly clear on the bodily level: we know the difference between making our teeth chatter on purpose and just finding them chattering with cold. It begins to be less clear when we talk of human love (leaving out the erotic kind). ‘Do I like him because I choose or because I must?’ — there are cases where this has an answer, but others where it seems to me to mean nothing. When we carry it up to relations between God and Man, has the distinction perhaps become nonsensical? After all, when we are most free, it is only with a freedom God has given us: and when our will is most influenced by Grace, it is still our will. And if what our will does is not ‘voluntary’, and if ‘voluntary’ does not mean ‘free’, what are we talking about? I’d leave it all alone.”
and elsewhere
“The Bible really seems to clinch the matter when it puts the two things together into one amazing sentence. The first half is, ‘Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling’—which looks as if everything depended on us and our good actions: but the second half goes on, “For it is God who worketh in you”—which looks as if God did everything and we nothing. I am afraid that is the sort of thing we come up against in Christianity. I am puzzled, but I am not surprised. You see, we are now trying to understand, and to separate into water-tight compartments, what exactly God does and what man does when God and man are working together. And, of course, we begin by thinking it is like two men working together, so that you could say, “He did this bit and I did that.” But this way of thinking breaks down. God is not like that. He is inside you as well as outside: even if we could understand who did what, I do not think human language could properly express it.”
/end of quotes
So much for the theology, but that does not fully cover the inappropriateness of the criticism. Dr. Peterson is not presenting his ideas as a Christian theologian, rather he is giving psychological and practical moral advice, and pointing to a source of more. Do you really thing that the state of not being a Christian absolves one of the responsibility of attempting moral behavior? If you do, then you are the heretic. If you don't your criticism of JP is beside the point. Not all of those to whom he is speaking and writing are Christians.
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"Murder rate: White America, like most Christian countries in the
Americas, Africa and Eastern Europe, is markedly more violent than most
of the Middle East (murders per 100,000 population):"
The killing of converts, infidels, homosexuals, heretics (including Muslims you disagree with) and other religious executions such as "honor killings" are not registered in Islamic countries as murders. Even so here are the Islamic nations which OFFICIALLY rank higher than the US in per capita murders, according to UN:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate
Rank Country
2 Comoros
3 Djibouti
15 Somalia
24 Chad
30 Algeria
31 Egypt
32 Libya
33 Morocco
34 Sudan
35 Tunisia
42 Burkina Faso
45 Gambia
47 Guinea
50 Mali
51 Mauritania
52 Niger
54 Senegal
55 Sierra Leone
The United States is ranked 92nd in this list. And the most Christian part of the US, the bible belt and rural portions as opposed to the cities, is the part with the least murders. And there are very few "Christian countries in the Americas" ranked in this list above those I have listed. A lot of the African Christian countries have a problem with violence from the muslim minority, in fact it is becoming a notable problem in the West.
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@patbrown5833 "firstly, the whole ughyur genocide thing is a charade invented by Adrian Zenz"
Pictures and all, eh? Neat trick. No, with the MSM, the federal bureaucracy, Hollywood, and the Internet gatekeepers in the tank for China an ANTI-CHINA HOAX wouldn't have a snowballs chance in hell.
"it would literally be impossible to run a country with over a billion people without it being authoritarian"
Firstly, that doesn't explain how India is becoming more democratic and open even as it begins to pass China in population. Secondly, if China can't avoid being an oppressive hellhole because of its size, that is an excellent reason to break it up, rather than acquiescing to it's acquisitive demands for more territory and more subjects.
Ultimately, to those charged with defending China's neighbors in Asia and the Pacific Rim, preventing the CCP from expanding it's hell to engulf their citizens is a more pressing issue than how or why China is oppressive. Communism/socialism is a common thread in totalitarian regimes (not all totalitarians are communist, but all communist governments are totalitarian), not country size. I'm sure you have a different excuse for Cuba, if anyone were foolish enough to listen.
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The Israeli claim to the land is not based solely on priority, but on the fact that they bought the land, they improved the land, and the land is theirs by international law. Priority, purchase, creation, law, conquest. By every standard that has ever certified title in any age of civilization, Israel owns the land, even if one is disinclined to consult the decree of God in the matter. Moreover those who want to conquer Israel also want to conquer everybody else. You can't make deals with folk who won't grant your right to live in freedom and won't negotiate in good faith. Property is a civilizational concept and only has meaning to the civilized. Leftist alignment with jihad is temporary and tactical both ways, both want to destroy the free world.
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"not sure if this type of 'both sides' debate should be done"
Of course you don't.
"this guy spewing propaganda without being checked"
You want an unceasing, uncontested, one sided narrative with no challenge. When the combined weight of the establishment captured institutions of lower and higher education, academia, legacy media, government bureaucracy, social media algorithms, etc. presents the Palestinian favoring view, presenting both sides is redundant. I am reminded of Rush Limbaugh who said "I don't have to give equal time, I AM equal time." You facilitate viewpoint diversity by presenting the suppressed viewpoint. "What's mine is mine and what's yours is half mine, too" won't fly here, and shouldn't anywhere.
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@Royal.Grand.Majesty "Territory is considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army."
By that definition, Gaza was not occupied by Israel before Oct 7. Gazan destitution is a result of foreign monetary aid and supplies were diverted by Hamas, 2 3rds for preparations for attack, and the remainder squirreled away to enrich Hamas leaders, cooling their heals in Qatar in luxury hotels.
"Controlling water, food, aid, transport routes, land/air control and dictating and restricting the use of naval wharfs and airports is in right an occupation, is it not?"
It is not. The only thing they were trying to restrict is the importation of arms. An arms embargo is not an occupation, again, by the definition YOU cited.
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@maplebones "That shouldn't shock you if you consider our intolerance."
Compared to whom? Protestants invented freedom of religion, and general tolerance. In fact, our standard, unlike the rest of the world isn't tolerance of diversity, it is acceptance. Immigrate to France and you'll never be French, move to Japan, and you'll never be Japanese. That's the same worldwide. Immigrate to the US and you're American, accepted by the vast majority, regardless of race, religion, etc. Those who deny this are simply lying. We are the most accepting and welcoming people on the face of the Earth.
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@theespionageact5249 "please tell me how free speech was violated."
In 2020, Congress summoned the CEOs of Google and Face Book to hearings about busting up tech monopolies with action on anti-trust legislation. THAT WAS THE STICK. In the questioning, Republican politicians asked pertinent questions about the level of these companies' corporate power and anti-competitive practices (preventing the overweening burgeoning of corporate power and enabling competition is SUPPOSED to be the point of antitrust law) and expressed concern about these companies' level of censorship (too high). Both in general (in pursuit of governments purpose of securing the civil rights of citizens) and topically (germane to the topic of an antitrust concern of corporations garnering too much power) this was an appropriate line of questioning. Democrat politicians, on the other hand asked the CEOs about their censorship policies, demanding that they sensor MORE. THAT WAS THE BLACKMAIL. That is exactly why this subject was brought up in the context of an "antitrust" hearing. If you are really concerned about the power exerted by "Big Tech", then it is a conflict of interest to insist that they exert more power and and throw their weight around more.
Consequently, the "helpful suggestions" from government figures and agencies were coercive, and were meant to be clearly understood as such. Coercing a publishing entity (for our current purpose it matters not whether the entity is a "publisher" or a "common carrier") to selectively remove legal material selected by the government official is a definitive and perfect definition of a violation of the First Amendment. You won't find a more "specific" violation in US history. THAT is why the communiques regarding censorship targets were confidential: because everyone involved knew it was illegal. If there were any room for doubt about this, the threats of government action from the Biden administration and Democrat politicians against Musk and Twitter for reducing the level of censorship removes that room. The threat is explicit, unmistakable, and clearly unconstitutional. Officials of THE US GOVERNMEN are currently CENSORING CITIZENS' COMMUNICATIONS, and at this point are doing so OPENLY and EXPLICITLY. The future of our Republic depends on ending this criminality, among others.
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Daniel Filippus - The SR-71 flew across the Soviet Union at very high altitude at mach 4 LENGTHWISE. Soviet SAMs, including some very big ones, could never shoot it down, nor could Soviet aircraft intercept it. If it was doing this with leaky tanks, it was definitely some badass tech.
Concerning the Concorde I am an American, and I say the Concorde was awesome and cool and a technological marvel whether it was profitable or not (not that I approve of government subsidies of commercial enterprises, if any). The bans on supersonic flight over land were in effect in US & Europe when the Concorde was operational, and they did not kill it. If you want to know what killed it, you must look at what CHANGED.
1. A crash
2. 911
3. Fuel prices
For the record, even though I suspect I would never have had a chance to ride on it anyway, I'm sorry it died.
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"genocide"
The Palestinians have been fully in Israel's power at least since the 1960s. If genocide were the Israeli policy the Palestinians would be extinct by now instead of more numerous on the basis of Israeli supplied water. You don't spend millions providing water to folk you want to exterminate in an arid land when they aren't even paying for it. You are just parroting talking points you haven't examined critically.
Israel is not executing genocide, but waging total war by the same rules the Western Allies fought World War 2 by. They didn't preclude civilian casualties then, and they don't now. You don't commit ground troops early to minimize civilian casualties if civilian casualties is a central war aim. I really don't know what is meant by pretending not to see what is in plain sight. The "genocide" idea is not being waved away, it evaporates under a critical gaze.
Kill ratio is not relevant to the moral distinction between terrorism and self defense.
"a 'case for Israel', with no intention to be fair-minded."
Vilifying the victim equally with the aggressor is not true or just. When the combined weight of the establishment captured institutions of lower and higher education, academia, legacy media, government bureaucracy, social media algorithms, etc. presents the Palestinian favoring view, presenting both sides is redundant. I am reminded of Rush Limbaugh who said "I don't have to give equal time, I AM equal time." Swimming as we do in such a sea of slander, you facilitate viewpoint diversity by presenting the suppressed viewpoint. "What's mine is mine and what's yours is half mine, too" won't fly here, and shouldn't anywhere.
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@DataLal
Yea, that one bothers me, too. I'm fairly certain that one comes from mishearing the contractions "would've", "could've", "should've"; contraction of "- have". That bothers me so much that I want to resolve never to use those contractions, but at my age I know my limitations. Actually, when speaking informal Midwestern among friends, I am more likely to say "would'a' ", etc. Probably a moot point at my age. I write a lot more than I talk, and I always write "would have", "could have", "should have"; and that's what I'm THINKING when I speak the contractions.
It seems I read a lot more of that, and things like there/their/they're, to/two/too and the like. I think it is two things: One, educational decline in the US, and another texting causing young folk to think of writing as a less formal and more colloquial medium than we oldtimers used to thing of it as (speaking for myself, rather than present company, of course).
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-TIK
This is sustained idiocy. By your own chart the US GDP after the war at the bottom of the trough you're complaining about is HALF AGAIN that of the GDP before the war and twice that of the real bottom just over a decade earlier. The wartime GDP does not represent wealth creation. We were busting a gut working everybody including for the first time women overtime and then some to create war materiel for ourselves and our allies. No durable goods were being laid up, as is usually the case, no long lasting houses were being made. This was going into bases with strategic value during the war, worthless in peacetime. Almost all of the manufactured goods that was not fired off or destroyed by the enemy was turned into razor blades after the war. Working our whole population at that pace for decades would have killed workers in droves. We were grinding our workforce and infrastructure into the dust. You are representing Hell as Heaven and Heaven as Hell.
You are calling a postwar peak unemployment of about 6% as worse than the Great Depression which saw unemployment rise as high as 25%. During the Kennedy administration economists were calling 4% unemployment "structural" and normal. The peak of the Carter "stagflation" saw simultaneous double digit inflation and unemployment. You compare the 50s, with an average annual GDP growth of 4.2% unfavorably with the 60s, with average annual GDP growth of 3.6%. You obviously don't know your ass from applesauce. I have no opinion on whether WW2 got us out of the Great Depression, but it an indisputable fact that when the war ended, we were out of it! Econometrics are supposed to be a measure of PROSPERITY, and we were more far more prosperous after the war than during or before. The war was not a boom (except in the literal sense). It was a suspension of productive activity for a survival crisis. The end of the war may have been bad for the military/industrial complex, but it was good for Americans, and not just because of the lives saved. The real economy resumed at last after a long hiatus.
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@elgatofelix8917 He does not claim Jews are the master race. He tells Jew jokes. Don't tell me you can't tell the difference. Klavan was never Judaic enough to consult a rabbi. And just because you find a commie hack rabbi who confirms your prejudices does not mean that you're right. An ethnicity is not a conspiracy.
A fundamental absurdity of Jew haters, after the absurdity of calling an ethnicity a conspiracy. Is equating anti-Zionist leftist political organizations, George Soros, SPLC, ACLU, BLM, Antifa with Zionists and Israel that all these groups are doing their best to destroy. The "party line" of these morons is that that is all a cover and that they are all on the same side. And the only argument they have to support their party line is "They are all run by Jews", in other words, they have no argument at all. The most cursory investigation of the Israel policies of these organizations shows that they have the SAME Israel policy as the "Jews are destroying the world" conspiracy theorists. In fact, every day in every way the "racist right" supports the same things the "cultural Marxists" support, from the centrality of "group identity" through the abolition of the civil rights enumerated in the Constitution (all of them, without exception) through segregation, to the ideal/goal of limited government and freedom itself. This is how you know they are false flag leftists-BECAUSE ALL OF THE THINGS THEY ADVOCATE ARE LEFTIST THINGS.
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@kucingcat8687
I won't defend "capitalism" because "capitalism" is Marx' theoretical caricature of economic freedom. The reason why economic freedom doesn't work for impoverished third world countries is because they don't have it. You can claim that economic freedom exists in the realm of international trade because there is no overarching regulatory authority. But that doesn't do an individual any good if he lives in a dictatorship.
"an example of how socialism works, it's Cuba."
Cuba is hell. The prosecution rests.
Freedom of opportunity and property rights have created the wealthiest societies in the world. Have created societies where the "poor" have a material position far more advantageous than the kings under former systems. That is where wealth and opportunity are made. If your ideology is actually better then "improve" some 3rd world country and out-compete the rest of the world. That is how freedom proved itself, by providing the greatest benefit to all, and to the least gifted in particular. It is irrelevant to say that this or that communism isn't "real". If communism were practical, and any of those who advocate it had any sort of clue how to implement it, then by now, almost 200 year after Marx published his ideas, SOMEBODY would have implemented and established the communist utopia which would be the wonder of the world. At any rate, until you do you have no empirical case, obviously.
If you are really concerned with human suffering and oppression, why do you always seek to "improve" the freest, most prosperous, and most equitable societies, rather than liberating the actually oppressed? It is almost as if you are more concerned with pulling down the rich than lifting up the poor.
In fact, and historically in practice, despotism results, and the reason why IS AN INHERENT FLAW OF THE THEORY. You seek to replace the free market with an arbitrary distribution of stuff. To do this you need an arbiter. The arbiter does not BECOME, he IS by nature of his function, the dictator. In fact, this is recognized in the theory, "the dictatorship of the proletariat". You, first, remove all the protections, restraints, checks and balances of the civic society, (often accompanied by the removal of checks on the conscience from religion,) give absolute power (in a sense greater even than the kings and emperors of old) to a person or a group, already acclimated to a free hand in the use of force when they steal everybody's stuff. Then you wonder why so many get murdered by your just and equitable and scientific government, and why life in your utopia is so similar to slavery.
In fact this similarity was recognized, and embraced by George Fitzhugh,19th century leftist and southern slavery advocate of the "positive good" school, that is, of those who insisted that slavery was good for the slave. (source, Dinesh D'Sousa "Death of a Nation") Like Wolff, of course, Fitzhugh characterizes the relationship between the wage worker and capital as oppressive. He goes further in comparing it unfavorably with slavery, claiming that the supposed freedom of choice of the wage worker is illusory and the wage worker is a "slave without a master", that is, in his construction, without a person obligated and motivated to "take care" of him. "The maxim, every man for himself embraces the whole moral code of a free society. The rich are continually growing richer and the poor poorer." Freedom is a "war of the rich, with the poor, and the poor with one another."
By way of contrast, he finds in slavery a sort of commune "in which the master furnishes the capital and skill, and the slaves the labor, and divide the profits, not according to each one's in-put, but according to each one's wants and necessities." He called the contemporary socialist theory "an ever receding and illusory Utopia." Slavery, he insists, is an existing and the only practical form of socialism, achieving "the ends all Communists and Socialists desire."
The common thread, is that to the libertarian sensibility essential freedom is freedom TO (to act), and to the socialist is freedom FROM (from responsibilities, uncertainties).
James Madison in Federalist 51, states the obvious that eludes these ivory tower theorists:
"The great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. The provision for defense must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of attack. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions."
A common fallacy of utopian ideologues is that human nature is inherently good, but is being held back by some flaw in the social contract. In fact, the same flawed, imperfect, selfish, stupid nature that infests the lord, or the "capitalist", infests the revolutionary. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The "capitalist" AS SUCH, can only hire or bribe. An unchecked authoritarian government can do that (with other people's money), plus arrest, torture, and kill you or your family. It is incoherent to fear the former and not fear the latter. No "angel" is available to bear this power benignly.
The socialist disconnect between productivity and incentives has been elaborated on. It is the aspect of socialism which impoverishes the society, and gives the lie to the altruistic pretensions of its advocates. The common folk of a socialist society are uniformly poorer than their counterparts in a free one, in addition to being sorely oppressed and hampered and proscribed at every turn.
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+William Faulkner
"This guy is just..."
Your "argument" is fallacious on a more fundamental level. You are not addressing his facts or his arguments, you are just giving yourself an excuse for dismissing them. It is a form of ad hominem which C.S Lewis called "Bulverism", basically, what folks are taught in schools today instead of crititcal thinking. "Mansplaining", and a priori dismissal of the opinions of non-minorities are all based on this fallacy:
From Bulverism by C. S. Lewis:
"You must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong. The modern method is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became so silly.
"In the course of the last fifteen years I have found this vice so common that I have had to invent a name for it. I call it "Bulverism". Some day I am going to write the biography of its imaginary inventor, Ezekiel Bulver, whose destiny was determined at the age of five when he heard his mother say to his father — who had been maintaining that two sides of a triangle were together greater than a third — 'Oh you say that because you are a man.' 'At that moment', E. Bulver assures us, 'there flashed across my opening mind the great truth that refutation is no necessary part of argument. Assume that your opponent is wrong, and explain his error, and the world will be at your feet. Attempt to prove that he is wrong or (worse still) try to find out whether he is wrong or right, and the natural dynamism of our age will thrust you to the wall.' That is how Bulver became one of the makers of the Twentieth Century.
"Suppose I think, after doing my accounts, that I have a large balance at the bank. And suppose you want to find out whether this belief of mine is 'wishful thinking.' You can never come to any conclusion by examining my psychological condition. Your only chance of finding out is to sit down and work through the sum yourself. When you have checked my figures, then, and then only, will you know whether I have that balance or not. If you find my arithmetic correct, then no amount of vapouring about my psychological condition can be anything but a waste of time. If you find my arithmetic wrong, then it may be relevant to explain psychologically how I came to be so bad at my arithmetic, and the doctrine of the concealed wish will become relevant — but only after you have yourself done the sum and discovered me to be wrong on purely arithmetical grounds. It is the same with all thinking and all systems of thought. If you try to find out which are tainted by speculating about the wishes of the thinkers, you are merely making a fool of yourself. You must first find out on purely logical grounds which of them do, in fact, break down as arguments. Afterwards, if you like, go on and discover the psychological causes of the error.
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@RissaFirecat They weren't written by eyewitnesses or those who interviewed eyewitnesses. The canon was essentially completed when many who had known the authors were still alive. This "Gospel of Judas" referenced, for instance was written after all the principals were long dead and the canon was compile.
It is true that in the early part of the 20th century, before the most recent manuscript discoveries were made, and when the oldest manuscripts for the New Testament books we had were hundreds of years after the events referred to, there were "Documentary Hypothesis" theories of the origin of many NT books promulgated by prominent German "higher critical scholars", the gospels in particular, which on the basis of some unsound internal speculation, asserted that much of the NT was an edited compilation of earlier sources, but this line of speculation depends on centuries having passed between the events and the books. This entire body of scholarship was swept away by later document finds which proved that there had not been time for such a process of legend and editing to have taken place before the books were extant.
Here are the dates for the most important (earliest) manuscripts (MSS) we have for the NT books:
Important Date
Manuscript Original MSS Approx.
Papyri Contents Written Date Time Span Location
p52 John 18:31-33, circa circa 29 yrs John Rylands Library,
(John Rylands 37-38 A.D. A.D. Manchester, England
Fragment) 96 125
P46 Rom. 5:17-6:3, 5-14; 50's- circa Approx. Chester Beatty Museum,
8:15-25, 27-35; 10:1-11, 70's A.D. 150 yrs Dublin & Ann Arbor,
22, 24-33, 35; 16:1-23, 200 Michigan, University
25-27; Heb.; 1 & 2 Cor., of Michigan library
(Chester Eph., Gal., Phil., Col.;
Beatty 1 Thess. 1:1, 9-10; 2:1-3;
Papyrus) 5:5-9, 23-28
P66 John 1:1-6:11, 70's circa Approx. Cologne, Geneva
(Bodmer 35-14:26; A.D. 130 yrs
Papyrus) fragment of 14:29-21:9 200
P67 Matt. 3:9,15; circa Approx. Barcelona, Fundacion
5:20-22, 25-28 A.D. 130 yrs San Lucas Evangelista,
200 P. Barc.1
Note that nobody claims that MSS are actually the originals penned by the authors, these are copies, so the books must have been written earlier than these MSS. The search for MSS is ongoing, of course and the difficult analysis of such finds as the Dead Sea Scrolls, which are small fragments of papyri in jars, is ongoing. Earlier MSS or fragments of NT books may be found or identified at any time.
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@imacmill "What is woke?"
"Woke" is the successor to "politically correct". "Politically correct" is a translation of a Russian phrase from the Soviet era. It was a recognition of Soviet enforcement of dogmatic "truth". When official non-acceptance of a fact is causing a problem, and your friend is contemplating saying the unsayable in public, you say, "You may be factually correct, but you are politically incorrect." This usage filtered its way into the Western left, and, as leftist authoritarian memes tend to do in a freer society, began to become so noxious that nobody would use it outside of dark sarcasm as a contemptuous term of ridicule. And we all would have lived happily ever after.
This tends to happen to leftist euphemisms once the sane folk figure out what the cryptic terminology means. Hence the restless reinvention of new leftist euphemisms. The waxing leftist power bloc, deprived of "politically correct" needed a new euphemism for their suppression of "wrongthink". Since they were more and more indoctrinating young folk in their causes du jour as a result of the "long march through the institutions" having locked down key institutions of higher learning and the teacher's unions for primary and secondary schools, it was convenient to couch the party line as an awakening to inspire and relate to their new charges/victims. They needed a shibboleth adjective to separate the sheep from the goats, and settled on the stylishly hip-hop sounding "woke".
It was a shortcut for the authoritarian notion that anyone who challenged the establishment position on various issues calculated to divide the society and empower the authorities, such as alphabet "community" dogma, discrimination on the basis of race or sex, certain "environmental" issues, should be slandered, marginalized, cancelled, fired, jailed, or killed. Residual love of freedom in the West resulted in this euphemism sharing the fate of former euphemisms, being used ironically or sarcastically by their intended victims, to the point that they could no longer use the term in public without risking being laughed out of the room.
Since the term is now used almost exclusively by freedom loving folk, some latecomers and youth quite innocently get the impression that the term was coined by conservatives as a derisive term for leftists. No, the leftists coined and defined the term and now that their intended victims are wise to it, will have to devise another (and so on, lather, rinse repeat). In the meantime they will have to make do with calling their victims names, suing them, censoring them, arresting them, and assaulting them.
I hope you found this lesson helpful, and if you have any further questions, don't hesitate to ask. It may take me a while to reply. The side which tries to settle a question of fact by the use of force is the obscurantist side, every time. That's how you know who the bad guys are.
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@channingdeadnight "All musk does is steal unworkable ideas from the past and pretend
they're his own. The few projects he has that actually work are using
technology from the sixties that we have had for ever."
You contradict yourself. An "unworkable idea" is, by definition, an idea that cannot be made to work.
The IDEAS of reusable rockets and electric vehicles are ideas that we have had for a long time. But an IDEA is NOT a "technology".
"Like almost every billion air out there he is a con man " [sic]
That is an absurd generalization. Entrepreneurs drive our economy through innovation. That is why the West has so much wealth. Con games don't generate wealth, they just redistribute it.
"making profit through government subsidies."
Launch and development contracts are not subsidies. They are payment for services.
"This is a man who stole a pocket full of emeralds from his father for spending money when he was a child."
Where would a upper middle class real estate dealer get a pocketful of emeralds? Elon responded to this slander:
“This is a pretty awful lie,” Elon tweeted. “I left South Africa by myself when I was 17 with just a backpack & suitcase of books.
Worked on my Mom’s cousin’s farm in Saskatchewan & a lumber mill in
Vancouver. Went to Queens Univ with scholarship & debt, then same to
UPenn/Wharton & Stanford.”
In a follow-up tweet, Elon said his father “didn’t own an emerald mine"
"He has never had an original idea in his life that has succeeded."
He is not an idea man, he is an engineer/entrepreneur. He succeeded with a software project when he was a teenager. He succeeded with Pay Pal as a very young man. He succeeded with electric vehicles. He was not the first to try, but the first to succeed. He succeeded with reusable rockets, currently in a position to profit from underselling all his launch competition. He was not the first to try, but the first to succeed. Some of his major ideas have not yet come to fruition. None of them have failed.
" If you disagree with what I'm saying look it up do some research and you'll find out everything I said was the truth."
None of what you're saying is even coherent. It doesn't rise to the level of error.
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To place this in the broader context of Islamic conquest, as for the place in the Koran or the hadith that once mentions that you can become a martyr by killing people, we have:
Koran 4:74 "Let those fight in the way of Allah who sell the life of this world for the other. Whoso fighteth in the way of Allah, be he slain or be he victorious, on him We shall bestow a vast reward." The martyrs of Islam are unlike the early Christians, who were led meekly to the slaughter. These Muslims are killed in battle as they attempt to inflict death and destruction for the cause of Allah. This is the theological basis for today's suicide bombers. The word martyr is not used in this passage, but a death richly rewarded by God is pretty much the definition of martyrdom.
Similarly,
Sahih Bukhari 55:44 A man came to Allah's Apostle and said, "Instruct me as to such a deed as equals Jihad (in reward)." He replied, "I do not find such a deed."
As for injunctions to violence toward kaffir, apostates, and hypocrites, pretty much throughout:
Koran 2:191-193
2:216
3:151
4:76
4:89
4:95 Not equal are those of the believers who sit (at home), except those who are disabled (by injury or are blind or lame, etc.), and those who strive hard and fight in the Cause of Allah with their wealth and their lives. Allah has preferred in grades those who strive hard and fight with their wealth and their lives above those who sit (at home).Unto each, Allah has promised good (Paradise), but Allah has preferred those who strive hard and fight, above those who sit (at home) by a huge reward " This passage criticizes "peaceful" Muslims who do not join in the violence, letting them know that they are less worthy in Allah's eyes. It also demolishes the modern myth that "Jihad" doesn't mean holy war in the Quran, but rather a spiritual struggle. Not only is this Arabic word (mujahiduna) used in this passage, but it is clearly not referring to anything spiritual, since the physically disabled are given exemption. (The Hadith reveals the context of the passage to be in response to a blind man's protest that he is unable to engage in Jihad, which would not make sense if it meant an internal struggle)
This is one of the references of the "fighting with money" escape clauses for the rich which I referenced in my earlier post.
4:104
8:12
8:39
8:67
8:59-60
9:5
9:14
9:20 Those who believe, and have left their homes and striven with their wealth and their lives in Allah's way are of much greater worth in Allah's sight. These are they who are triumphant." The Arabic word interpreted as "striving" in this verse is the same root as "Jihad". The context is obviously holy war.
9:29
9:38-39
9:41
9:73
9:88
9:111
9:123
33:60-62
47:3-4
47:35
48:17
48:29
61:4
66:9
Sahih Bukhari 52:117
52:220
52:256
Abu Dawud 14:2526, 2527
And many more.
The result of the measures demanded by BDS, including "right of return", would be to place the Israelis at the mercy of the Palestinians, and any sober and objective analysis of the situation will point to genocide as the result of that. For this we have the sworn word of the Palestinians themselves with the most energetic proofs of their sincerity in deeds. For this we have the track record of the behavior of recent Islamic conquest:
Lebanon:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5-3mqDuj00
Nigeria:
https://www.vanguardngr.com/2020/01/how-christians-are-persecuted-in-nigeria-christian-group/
https://www.voanews.com/africa/christian-group-names-nigeria-hot-spot-persecution
https://www.christiantoday.com/article/over.1200.christians.killed.in.nigeria.in.first.half.of.2020.human.rights.group/135202.htm
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16349/genocide-christians-nigeria
https://www.dailysignal.com/2020/12/02/the-horrific-killing-of-christians-in-nigeria/
In Uganda a Christian administration is slowing the persecution of Christians, but it still goes on:
https://www.worldvision.org/disaster-relief-news-stories/uganda-genocide-nightmare-finally-end
https://www.opendoorsusa.org/christian-persecution/stories/how-covid-19-is-making-christian-persecution-even-worse-in-africa/
https://www.persecution.org/2019/10/03/christian-man-uganda-loses-family-attack-home/
https://www.persecution.org/2019/11/25/christian-poisoned-brothers-uganda/
https://www.persecution.org/2021/01/11/christian-convert-uganda-killed/
Experience with Islamic neighborhoods in Western nations suggest that Muslims can, as a community, hardly restrain themselves from oppressing their neighbors even when they are in the minority. And the Jews have a special place in Islamic xenophobia and eschatology:
He says it in both Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, Islam's two most canonical hadith collections:
Sahih al-Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 56, Number 791:
Sahih al-Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 52, Number 176:
Sahih al-Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 52, Number 177:
Sahih Muslim, Book 041, Number 6981:
Sahih Muslim, Book 041, Number 6983:
Sahih Muslim, Book 041, Number 6984:
Sahih Muslim Book 041, Number 6985:
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" America is also geographically really protected from, well, everyone. During major conflicts like the world wars every major power was close enough to every other major power that they'd all take a beating in the war."
The US economic ascendancy was largely complete before the world wars and quite evident by the outset of WW2. And WW1 did not devastate the industrial infrastructure of Europe. It spent a lot of money (including US money), killed a lot of people (including US people), and chewed up a little farmland, but the industrial infrastructure was still intact. The notion that the world wars played a part in the economic ascendancy of the US is chronologically impossible.
After WW2, the US may have gained from the fact that everybody else's factories were bombed, but that is offset by war debt incurred lend/leasing and lending all the allies equipment and supplies, and the Marshall Plan loans to rebuild Europe, as well as Cold War military commitments. Currently, defense related factors are favoring Europe economically because Europe is leaning heavily on US for defense expenditures and operations. How was the Balkan crisis not a regional problem? But it was regarded in Europe as a US responsibility.
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@patbrown5833 You haven't made points (arguments) you have simply made diametrically counterfactual statements (assertions).
China doesn't even deny the existence of the "reeducation camps" anymore, they just accuse the natives of "terrorism". International rights groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have documented the abuses:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/uighurs-accuse-china-mass-detention-torture-landmark-complaint-n1239493
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-uighur-group-oppression-labour-camps-us-sanctions-human-rights-abuse-a9634396.html
https://www.codastory.com/authoritarian-tech/china-oppression-uyghurs-history/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2020/03/05/china-moves-uyghur-muslims-into-forced-labor-factories/
As for pictures, I was not talking about the standard regional establishing shots you find in any documentary or news story, I was talking about this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEkliuqQo-g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMkHcZ5IwjU
Since you seem to be denying the inhumanly repressive nature of the CCP regime, I will pile on with the organ harvesting from political prisoners:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/11/16/china-covers-up-killing-of-prisoners-to-harvest-organs-for-transplant-new-report/
https://www.businessinsider.com/china-harvesting-organs-of-uighur-muslims-china-tribunal-tells-un-2019-9?op=1
China has territorial disputes with all it's neighbors because China seeks to expand and conquer.
There is no comparison between India's democracy and the CCP's kleptocracy that favors the latter objectively. My point that the CCP is oppressive because it is communist, and not because it is big, stands the historical test. And, as I said, to China's neighbors why is not important. China is making no bones about being an existential threat to the whole region. If they're not trying to hide it, why should you?
Democracy means the people choose their leaders. That doesn't happen in Cuba at all. There is no democracy in Cuba. Cuba is murderously oppressive, and the Cuban exile community in Florida is all the evidence you need. They risked their lives fleeing Cuba in homemade boats, inner tubes and inverted roofs. You don't do that if your life is fine where you are:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Cuba
https://www.cubacenter.org/articles-and-events/2016/4/27/continued-oppression-of-the-cuban-people
https://www.cubacenter.org/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/nov/18/political-repression-raul-castro
Now, for your future enlightenment, THOSE are POINTS. Arguments, documentation, evidence. Not spouting wild assertions that everybody including yourself knows are false.
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@nickrose8733
About the election, the Maricopa county audit indicates otherwise. The audit shows thousands of ballots counted without signatures. The audit shows multiple duplicate ballots counted. The incriminating details are illustrated in the charts in the video presentation before the Arizona senate. Watch the video, it starts out slow, but it clearly shows far more ballots that were likely fraudulent and should not have been counted than the margin of victory.
Every time I try to post a link to the Arizona legislative briefing on the audit the YT chat algorithm shows it as posted, but when I reload the page, the post is deleted (it just happened 4 times in a row), but if I found the video, you can find it (at least with the Duck Duck Go search engine). Yes, the Moon landings happened, but you're not a credible defender of the fact. Do the truth a favor and get off my side.
"If the videos show proven lies, which they do, then I would rather a private company like YouTube have the right to remove them from their search algorithm, so that my kids don't look up moon landing, and watch a video that is full of lies."
I am a Buzz Aldrin fan who disagrees with you, and so would all the Apollo astronauts, even though they were personally affected. The side that tries to settle a question of fact by the use of force is the obscurantist side every time. Even when occasionally they suppress something false as cover. Nobody can be entrusted with that kind of power.
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@nickrose8733 "If someone says they think Trump won, they have a right to say it, and they even have a right to refer to concocted evidence, or evidence that has been debunked or falsified."
You haven't watched the breifing, have you? The whole audit was conducted in the open with an invitation to bipartizan review. There was no room for accusations of falsification.
"I wish you all the very best with Biden as your President for the next 3 years." Yes, the theft is irreversible. There is no Constitutional procedure for removing a president once the election has been certified. All they had to do was drag their feet until the inauguration, and it was a done deal. That is not the same as saying what happened doesn't matter, or that the criminals should not be prosecuted. Also, this has implications for ongoing anti-fraud legislation. "We got away with it." For now.
You are an opponent of free speech, and, consequently, an obscurantist.
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@scalesofleviathan9697 By that standard Communism AS PRACTICED is right wing. The most hierarchical and despotic states in the world are either communist or Islamic. What is the point of obsessing over minor differences nobody cares about and pretending they represent "OPPOSITE" ends of a meaningful political "spectrum"? (Other than obscuring the central issues) "A difference that MAKES no difference IS no difference." Both commies and Nazis will:
Divide the public and foster hate along class/religious/gender/class lines
Segregate
Central plan the economy
Nationalize the press
End freedom of speech
Confiscate weapons
Persecute all non state sponsored religions
End all civil rights, including the rights enumerated in the US Constitution (and the Magna Carta).
Evict innocent citizens from their homes
Mobilize the apparatus of law and tax enforcement against their political enemies
Slander, imprison, and murder their political enemies
Eliminate or absorb all public organizations
Replace commercial entertainment media with a boring stream of propaganda.
The minor, insignificant differences between communism and Nazism are only important to communists and Nazis, not to anybody who loves freedom. You won't distract us from our fight for freedom with your internal socialist squabble over who should be our master.
"He is in great fear, not knowing what mighty one may suddenly appear, wielding the Ring, and assailing him with war, seeking to cast him down and take his place. That we should wish to cast him down and have no one in his place is not a thought that occurs to his mind."-J.R.R. Tolkien, "Lord of the Rings"
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"The left right divide is fake, it has no nexus to reality whatsoever."
Agreed, it is a socialist construct to equate the dissimilar and separate the identical.
"the demise of every living creature on the planet."
There is no scientist who believes that. There are some fairly absurd apocalyptic predictions coming from pseudoscientists, but none predict the extinction of life.
"There is no gun debate."
Agreed, facts an figures on the NRA side, victims in wheelchairs and special pleading on the other. This is not a rational debate.
" Unlimited funds for the manufacture of weapons of death while there is no money for essential social services"
Discretionary and non-discretionary social services spending 70% of the budget, interest on debt 6%, military spending 16% of total budget.
"no value on life whatsoever."
So you're pro-life? A more reasonable test of who has his heart in the right place is who voluntarily gives charitably as a percentage of their income and who volunteers. That would be the US leading as a percentage of GDP, with Israel as second and UK as third. Among the citizens of the US it is the conservatives who contribute most as a percentage of their income and volunteer the most for charity. Who cares about his fellow man? He who volunteers himself or he who volunteers somebody else (tax and spend)? As Mark Twain observed “To do good is noble. To tell others to do good is even nobler and much less trouble.”
Idiot revisionist historian shilling obvious bollocks.
If the west wanted to conquer the world, the world would be conquered.
After VJ day the US had the most powerful naval and air armada in the world, a vast army, and exclusive access to the atom bomb. We could at that point have conquered the world by ourselves. In all these wars the idiots say are for oil, how is it that we neglected to seize the oil? The conquest ethic once indeed ruled the world. It is the west, and in particular the US, that came up with the alternative of making wealth by technological and industrial innovation, as a replacement for the conquest paradigm. Some non-western nations haven't gotten the memo.
"Half the country may live in poverty"
12.7%. You should stick to vague outrageous hyperbole. This is the age of the Internet. When you make up FIGURES you get fact checked. A vague general narrative takes longer to debunk.
"our civil liberties may be taken from us"
Yes, this video documents your buddies doing this.
"militarized police may murder unarmed citizens in the streets"
That was the media narrative, but it has been proven false.
"we may run the world’s largest prison system"
That's because China and Russia kill a larger percentage of those they arrest.
"but all these truths are studiously ignored."
All these distortions and slanders are trumpeted from the rooftops by the mainstream media, Hollywood and government funded broadcasting, and government funded colleges, and that is where you learned the party line.
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AI driving is more of a threat for Uber drivers and taxis than for truckers for several reasons. Among them:
1. Trucker's pay may be greater than an uber driver, but the economic volume of the task per vehicle/hour is such that the trucker's pay is a smaller PERCENTAGE of the total bottom line of the respective industries. The same comparison applies to self employed owner/operators in the respective industries.
2. In the case of personal transport, a human (usually accompanied by a pair of intelligently directed hands) is always available to work around any bottlenecks, glitches, or unforeseen problems the AIs stupidity or physical limitations may encounter. Not so in trucking if you eliminate the driver.
3. Trucking involves more in-the-field manual work.
4. A tractor/trailer truck accident often involves more potential for injury, death and property loss than an accident involving a smaller vehicle, and particularly injury for a person involved who is NOT inside the cab.
5. The size of the vehicle is such that provision for a driver does not add that much to the weight, aerodynamics, or cost of the vehicle percentage-wise as is the case in a smaller vehicle.
6. A robot truck would be easier to 'jack.
I can see auto-drive being installed in the trucks as an assist, but if jobs are lost to auto-drive, the truckers will be the last to lose theirs. Perhaps, in the forseeable future, autodrive will mean fewer 2 person truck driving crews.
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@cioccolateriaveneziana
Protestantism created the modern libertarian west. We (Protestants) ended slavery; implemented religious freedom, political freedom, academic freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press FIRST, and thus caused the academic, scientific, technological, and material progress that followed; and most of the rest of the world hasn't caught up with it yet. John 8:32 "You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free. "Religion" is such a broad term that virtually no generalizations can be applied to the "whole".
If you want questions of fact to be settled by force (the ultimate recourse of the obscurantist), you really can't beat atheism, and its derivatives (including wokeism), it has a singularly abysmal track record. From the Jacobin Reign of Terror in the French Revolution, through the Soviet Union, the Third Reich, Communist China, and the Pol Pot regime; the result of a society based on atheism has invariably been bloodbath after bloodbath. The USSR alone murdered more of its own civilians than have ever been killed in all the inquisitions, pogroms, and purely religious wars in recorded history, and they only lasted: what? 80 or so years?
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@zoeyjusko7258 " It apparently says whatever people want it to say."
If you're disingenuous enough, ANYTHING can say whatever you want it to say. Protestantism created the modern libertarian west. We (Protestants) implemented religious freedom, political freedom, academic freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press FIRST, and thus caused the academic, scientific, technological, and material progress that followed; and most of the rest of the world hasn't caught up with it yet. John 8:32 "You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
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@RonJohn63
In the past hundred years, science has not been kind to the notions of atheism and philosophical materialism, rather science has consistently and systematically undercut those claims. Whenever an aspect of science or archaeology can be brought to bear on the questions of origins, it has favored the theist position.
Atheism became a moderately popular alternate view of origins in the Victorian Era. Science was just getting started, and since one of the aspects which science addressed was how things worked, a hope began to be fostered among those hostile to faith that explanations of science might serve to displace the revealed truth of the Bible.
It is common sense that anything that began must have been begun by something else. Jews and Christians had long taught that physics/space/time/matter (from now on we will just call it matter) was a created thing, created by God. God's origins did not have to be explained because he did not begin. He was either eternally pre-existant, or outside time altogether. In either case he was GROUND OF BEING, the prime mover or central fact of which all other facts were derivative.
No explanation can be offered for why something exists rather than nothing. Yet, this should not give us pause because SOMETHING DOES EXIST. If in the link of causality there was ever a node where NOTHING EXISTED, then of course, nothing would exist forever thereafter. Anything which begins to exist must be caused by something else. It follows that any account of origin must either have an infinite regression, or a closed loop, or a ground of being.
Christians claimed that God was outside of time, and ground of being. The Atheists of the Victorian era countered Matter was eternally pre-existant, thus did not begin, thus required no agent of origin. They claimed Matter was Ground of Being. In the area of the origin of species they resorted to the notion of evolution, as lame as "it just happened" might seem to first order as an explanation. At first, this was not presented as a theory of the origin of life itself, because it was not yet known that life was not eternally pre-existant. This body of belief will be referred to as "materialism" in the remainder of this treatise (not to be confused with a preoccupation with the trappings of wealth, which is "materialism" in a completely unrelated sense). Though atheism and materialism almost always go together, the terms have different definitions. Atheism is the belief that no God exists. Materialism is the belief that matter is ground of being; that everything that exists is physics/space/time/matter simply, or a derivative epiphenomenon of it. It is generally recognized that atheism, in the strictest sense, stands or falls on the strength of materialism. Evolution is generally understood to be necessary for atheism/materialism, but not the reverse.
But starting in 1924, Edwin Hubble painstakingly developed a series of distance indicators to galaxies. This allowed him to estimate distances to galaxies whose red shifts had already been measured, mostly by Slipher. In 1929 Hubble discovered a correlation between distance and recession velocity—now known as Hubble's law. Lemaître had already shown that this was expected, given the cosmological principle. In the 1920s and 1930s almost every major cosmologist preferred an eternal steady state universe, and several complained that the beginning of time implied by the Big Bang imported religious concepts into physics; this objection was later repeated by supporters of the competing steady state theory. The rub is that Big Bang means that matter had a beginning, and thus cannot be ground of being. This undercuts the logical underpinnings of atheism/materialism
<This exposition will continue in my next post>
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Barrie Rodliffe - (about WW2 military aircraft) - When the US entered the war, US B-17 and the UK Lancaster, besides being capable of other missions, were the only bombers capable of bombing targets deep in Germany from bases in the UK. No 2 man bombers available at the time could perform this mission. The vital difference was that the B-17 was tasked with daylight precision bombing of individual specific targets like factories, railroad junctions, oil fields, refineries, etc. , initially without fighter support for the final leg of the mission, because no fighters had the range to escort that far. The Lancaster was employed in night raids on cities, targets large enough that you could position yourself to attack them closely enough by celestial navigation, without having to try to see invisible landmarks in a blacked-out city. The Lancaster's inferior defensive armament was not relevant to night bombing, because at this stage Germany did not have night fighters and they faced only flack (on clear nights when the searchlights got lucky). Obviously, a ton of bombs delivered on a specific chosen target is worth more than a ton of bombs labelled "To whom it may concern". These precise daylight raid targets usually were surrounded by infrastructure, worker residential areas, etc., so on the whole, the daylight bombing raid's "misses" had about the same material effect on the war as the nightly bombing raids "hits". By your account, when the UK considered getting into the daylight bombing action, they considered doing it with B-17s, not with Lancasters, because Lancasters did not have the defensive firepower that mission required. It is meaningless to compare any other contemporary allied bomber with the B-17 series, because it was (and is) conceded that no other contemporary bomber could perform it's primary mission (until the introduction of the B-29).
After the introduction of the P-51, and before advances on the western European front made forward fighter bases possible, for the first time it became possible for fighters, in shifts, to escort bombers all the way to Germany from bases in the UK. The Spitfire had a role in this rotation, but no fighter could stay WITH the bomber formation all the way because the bomber's cruising speed at load was less than any fighter's ferry speed so a fighter escorting heavy bombers guzzled fuel. So the escort was arranged in shifts throughout the raid, each subsequent shift flying from the UK to a rendezvous at the fighter's ferry speed, slowing to relieve the previous shift in escort . The only fighter capable of escorting the bombers on the crucial farthest leg of the raid from UK bases all the way into Germany and back to a rendezvous with another shift, even with drop tanks, was the P-51 you maligned. The Supermarine Spitfire, an excellent fighter without a doubt, excelled at decimating German fighters and bombers in the Battle of Britain, in a defensive role in which range was largely irrelevant, but as the allies switched to the offensive air war, it was nevertheless largely relegated to the tactical air superiority role because of its limited range. Here are the relevant specs (the range of values is due to variants; both fighters were improved during the war):
Spitfire combat range: 395- 470 mi on internal fuel.
P-51 combat range: 750-1180 mi on internal fuel.
Goering said after the war that he knew the war was lost when he first saw heavy bombers over Germany with fighter escort. For good and sufficient reasons, the bombers he saw were US heavies, and the fighters he saw were P-51s.
The best weapons systems were constantly improved during the war, to the extent that most of the tanks and planes employed at the start could well be considered obsolete by its end. The fact that the B-17 was improved during the war is not, as you implied, evidence that it was bad. The best weapons systems were improved, the worst were discontinued if there was a replacement.
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Don't like dualism? Well you can't throw out consciousness: We all experience consciousness in a mode that makes its denial meaningless. And materialism can't account for it. There is nothing in materialism that allows for consciousness even as an epiphenomenon. The notion that consciousness arises from matter is a category error. Not a simple error, like 2+2=5, but a category error, like 2+2=blue. You can do sums on integers till the sun goes nova and your answer will always be an integer. Someday, Lord willing, I will write a book on this.
So, being a skeptic about the immaterial consciousness is to hold a world view that excludes, well, YOU! The only option for rejecting dualism is to reject MATTER as a fundamental reality on par with mind. This can be thought of as a variation on the simulation hypothesis, where our world is a sim running not on a computer, but in a MIND. This obviates any supposed interaction problems. Note, that I don't have any problem with mind/matter dualism, myself. But if you do, this is the only viable alternative. A more complete response to materialism is in my post on the +Bill Smith thread below.
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+Albert Rogers
Attempting to imply that Hitler was a Christian in the face of overwhelming documentation to the contrary, AR spins:
"Hitler was a baptised Catholic," Technically incorrect as written, you could have said "Hitler was baptised as a Catholic." and been technically correct while glossing over the fact that Catholic families baptize infants and thus Hitler had no say in that matter. Hitler was a heathen who had been baptized Catholic.
"nor confessedly apostate." He was not quite publicly apostate for political reasons, he did expressly and unequivocally disavow and deny Christianity. This is well documented. (Unless you say he was never a Christian in the first place, and thus could not be an apostate, but a heathen.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Adolf_Hitler
"He behaved exactly like the worst of the Christian Far Wrong in this country, and the worst promoters of Jihad in Islam. "
Certainly he expressed some admiration for Islam. The moral equating of traditional Christianity and Jihad is a frequent slander of the "new atheists". The center of religious and political freedom is the regional and cultural entity currently called "the west". It used to be called Christendom. It will be interesting to see how long the freedom can outlast the cause. Unfortunately, to live in interesting times is a curse.
"You are NOT entitled to call all bad behaviour Atheism, especially in the cases where the individual believes he is God."
In this sentence he forbids me license to do to his folks exactly what he did to mine in the previous sentence. But it is a straw man. I was not calling bad behavior atheism. I was pointing out that the attribution of National Socialism to Christianity was diametrically false. Calling bad behavior atheism is not the same as noting the bad behavior of atheist institutions. To be fair, I may mention that while certainly irreconcilably hostile to Christianity, Hitler never expressly avowed atheism. And he criticized atheism as a cypher for communism. It is hard to pin this snake down, because he was an inveterate liar. The only thing we can be certain of is that he was not was a Christian, because if somebody says he is not a Christian, he is not a Christian. (Matt 10:33 "But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven.")
"Nor may you criticize Eugenics, the belief that it would be better if we could breed from less useless and obnoxious people (A very difficult thing to define, which is why intelligent people have abandoned it) with the belief that one's own supposed race is superior to all others"
Dude, I don't need license from you to criticize eugenics, or anything else. Eugenics is discredited completely enough that to criticize it is to beat a dead horse. It is not so much intelligent people as socially or morally sensitive people who have abandoned it. Wags say, "The Nazis gave eugenics a bad name", but, of course, eugenics got a bad name by being practiced and found immoral in practice, not only by the Nazis, but as practiced by such local lights as The American Eugenics Society and the American Birth Control League the latter of which sponsored and proposed for law the "American Baby Code":
http://www.abortionfacts.com/learn-inc/the-american-baby-code
As this forthright expression of timeless Democrat party ideals turned out to not be as popular as they expected, they changed their name from "The American Birth Control League" to "Planned Parenthood", changing their rhetoric, while maintaining the same goals and methods.
As for the belief that one's race is superior, the notion "the fact that we conquered you is scientific proof that we are the fittest and are actively improving the human race" is as Darwinian as falsified embryo drawings.
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When the combined weight of the establishment captured institutions of lower and higher education, academia, legacy media, government bureaucracy, social media algorithms, etc. presents the Palestinian favoring view, presenting both sides is redundant. I am reminded of Rush Limbaugh who said "I don't have to give equal time, I AM equal time." You facilitate viewpoint diversity by presenting the suppressed viewpoint. "What's mine is mine and what's yours is half mine, too" won't fly here, and shouldn't anywhere.
You have the floor here in the comment section. If you have an argument, make it. Saying "Shut up" isn't an argument.
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Well, making a big deal out of what they look like would have nothing to do with solving the problem. Making a big deal of what they look like was central to causing the problem in the first place, or hadn't you noticed? In other words, if the Mayors in question in (New Orleans and Chicago) weren't racist in their politics, the problem wouldn't be nearly as bad. Obviously the fallacy of their politics is thinking that you can fight racism with racism. Conservatives are not going to make that mistake, no matter how you groypers try to fool us.
No, we're not "supposed to" forget race. We're "supposed to" fixate on it, and become what they keep insisting that we are. That is their trap. There is no solution to the problem along those lines, that's a canard. Enforce the laws without fear or favor. THAT is what will WORK, and it is, not coincidentally, what is JUST.
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"The only thing that matters is what i'm saying is true or is iit not?That's all that i asked in the replies"
This is the first time you have brought that up and for your information it is not true that a racial or religious group is monolithically conspiring against the rest of the world. (And the closest thing to it is militant Islam, which you are helping). Of course, you knew you were blowing smoke, right?
"Therefor i'm assuming you are Jewish."
If all that matters is whether your lies are true or not, why would it matter whether I'm Jewish?
You are attempting to get around having to refute my views by giving what you think is a reason to dismiss them without thought. This is called Bulverism, which is what they teach in schools nowadays in place of critical thinking. Of course, this will not work for you on most readers, because most readers aren't bigots:
Quote from Bulverism by C. S. Lewis:
You must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong. The modern method is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became so silly.
In the course of the last fifteen years I have found this vice so common that I have had to invent a name for it. I call it "Bulverism". Some day I am going to write the biography of its imaginary inventor, Ezekiel Bulver, whose destiny was determined at the age of five when he heard his mother say to his father — who had been maintaining that two sides of a triangle were together greater than a third — "Oh you say that because you are a man." "At that moment", E. Bulver assures us, "there flashed across my opening mind the great truth that refutation is no necessary part of argument. Assume that your opponent is wrong, and explain his error, and the world will be at your feet. Attempt to prove that he is wrong or (worse still) try to find out whether he is wrong or right, and the natural dynamism of our age will thrust you to the wall." That is how Bulver became one of the makers of the Twentieth Century.
Suppose I think, after doing my accounts, that I have a large balance at the bank. And suppose you want to find out whether this belief of mine is "wishful thinking." You can never come to any conclusion by examining my psychological condition. Your only chance of finding out is to sit down and work through the sum yourself. When you have checked my figures, then, and then only, will you know whether I have that balance or not. If you find my arithmetic correct, then no amount of vapouring about my psychological condition can be anything but a waste of time. If you find my arithmetic wrong, then it may be relevant to explain psychologically how I came to be so bad at my arithmetic, and the doctrine of the concealed wish will become relevant — but only after you have yourself done the sum and discovered me to be wrong on purely arithmetical grounds. It is the same with all thinking and all systems of thought. If you try to find out which are tainted by speculating about the wishes of the thinkers, you are merely making a fool of yourself. You must first find out on purely logical grounds which of them do, in fact, break down as arguments. Afterwards, if you like, go on and discover the psychological causes of the error.
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Democratic election of representatives and officials in the Federal government and the requirement for the states admitted to have a representative form of government were just one among many, even if the most profound and radical, means of DISPERSING POWER. Often the the system of the US republic is compared unfavorably with a parliamentary system, for instance, on the grounds of efficiency. The parliamentary supposedly more rapidly implements the sense of the majority. Such critics are mistaking a means for an end. The founders of the US constitutional republic were concerned with dissipating power, of keeping it from being concentrated and thus facilitating tyranny. Democracy is just one, even if the most important and radical, of the means to this end. "Checks and balances" were placed throughout the system. Gridlock is a feature, not a bug. Democracy may well be necessary for freedom, but it is certainly INSUFFICIENT.
That being said, it is absurd to berate anybody who refers to the US democracy, or discusses the democratic aspect of our government. Classifying the US and other Western nations under the generalization "democracies" is a useful and, as far as it goes, valid usage. For one thing, no 2 critics who dogmatically insist that the US be referred to exclusively as a "republic" and never as a "democracy" posit the same definition (if they posit any at all) of what "republic" means. Often, they are fuzzy on the definition of "democracy" as well. The term "republic" is better as a description of the US, but in some contexts, particularly when discussing voting, or grouping our closest allies by common values, democracy is an important concept. It is the left who are in the business of banning words.
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@jupitard "Can you tidy up your post about "Jew haters"? "
"It's full of theys and thems and generalisation "[sic]
It is impossible to speak about groups of people without generalizations. To speak about groups is to argue the validity or non validity of generalizations or their fractional applicability. Tell you what, I can't do anything about the generalizations but I will do a copy with all the pronouns (except "I"=Digital Nomad) specified. The clarifications will be in brackets "[ ]". You are probably wasting my time on this since I suspect your problem is not that you don't understand, but that you disagree:
A fundamental absurdity of Jew haters [henceforth specified as JH], after the absurdity of calling an ethnicity a conspiracy is equating anti-Zionist leftist political organizations, George Soros, SPLC, ACLU, BLM, Antifa [shortened as Alphabet Soup or AS] with Zionists and Israel that all these groups are doing their best to destroy. The "party line" of these morons [JH] is that that is all a cover and that they [AS on the one hand and Israel on the other] are all on the same side. And the only argument they [JH] have to support their party line is "They [AS and Israel and Zionists] are all run by Jews", in other words, they [JH] have no argument at all. The most cursory investigation of the Israel policies of these organizations [AS] shows that they [AS] have the SAME Israel policy as the "Jews are destroying the world" conspiracy theorists.
In fact, every day in every way the "racist right" supports the same things the "cultural Marxists" support, from the centrality of "group identity" through the abolition of the civil rights enumerated in the Constitution (all of them, without exception) through segregation, to the ideal/goal of limited government and freedom itself. This is how you know they ["racist right"] are false flag leftists-BECAUSE ALL OF THE THINGS THEY ["racist right"] ADVOCATE ARE LEFTIST THINGS.
/end revision
I don't really think that this is an improvement. Pronouns are used for a reason. I did catch a false sentence ending near the start which probably confused things a little, so I thank you for letting me catch and edit that. I added a paragraph separation for "white space" eye relief.
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I suppose the Koch brothers find what Rubin says to be helpful, that does not discredit him. You are not addressing his facts or his arguments, you are just giving yourself an excuse for dismissing them. It is a form of ad hominem which C.S Lewis called "Bulverism", basically, what folks are taught in schools today instead of crititcal thinking. "Mansplaining", and a priori dismissal of the opinions of non-minorities are all based on this fallacy:
From Bulverism by C. S. Lewis:
"You must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong. The modern method is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became so silly.
"In the course of the last fifteen years I have found this vice so common that I have had to invent a name for it. I call it "Bulverism". Some day I am going to write the biography of its imaginary inventor, Ezekiel Bulver, whose destiny was determined at the age of five when he heard his mother say to his father — who had been maintaining that two sides of a triangle were together greater than a third — 'Oh you say that because you are a man.' 'At that moment', E. Bulver assures us, 'there flashed across my opening mind the great truth that refutation is no necessary part of argument. Assume that your opponent is wrong, and explain his error, and the world will be at your feet. Attempt to prove that he is wrong or (worse still) try to find out whether he is wrong or right, and the natural dynamism of our age will thrust you to the wall.' That is how Bulver became one of the makers of the Twentieth Century.
"Suppose I think, after doing my accounts, that I have a large balance at the bank. And suppose you want to find out whether this belief of mine is 'wishful thinking.' You can never come to any conclusion by examining my psychological condition. Your only chance of finding out is to sit down and work through the sum yourself. When you have checked my figures, then, and then only, will you know whether I have that balance or not. If you find my arithmetic correct, then no amount of vapouring about my psychological condition can be anything but a waste of time. If you find my arithmetic wrong, then it may be relevant to explain psychologically how I came to be so bad at my arithmetic, and the doctrine of the concealed wish will become relevant — but only after you have yourself done the sum and discovered me to be wrong on purely arithmetical grounds. It is the same with all thinking and all systems of thought. If you try to find out which are tainted by speculating about the wishes of the thinkers, you are merely making a fool of yourself. You must first find out on purely logical grounds which of them do, in fact, break down as arguments. Afterwards, if you like, go on and discover the psychological causes of the error.
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@bosshog8844 The Palestinians have been completely in Israel's power at least since 1967. If genocide was Israel's intent, Palestinians would be extinct. Genocide is not a body count. It is a specific thing that Israel has never done and never tried. The current libel has two buzzwords, "apartheid" and "genocide". In the defining example of the first term, blacks in South Africa during apartheid did not have the right to vote or equal protection under the law. Therefore, the term is slander. The Palestinians have been completely in Israel's power at least since the 1960s. If genocide were Israel's policy, the Palestinians would be extinct, instead of more populous than ever. If genocide where the current war policy, Israel wouldn't be issuing warnings to the Palestinian populace about future targets, granting safe corridors for flight, or committing ground troops early accepting increased casualties in their military to minimized civilian casualties. The genocide charge is also slander.
In the current conflict Israel is conducting total war by the same rules the Anglophone Allies played by in the Second World War. Those rules did not preclude civilian casualties then, and they don't now. Fortunately, at that time the adults were in charge else those very rules would by now be a relic from a banned history book.
Leftists have fondly imagined themselves using Islamic jihad as a tool to destroy the West, then taking over and stealing the revolution. Events unfolding in Europe are beginning to awaken them to the fact that they don't have what it takes to prevail against their erstwhile allies. Conservatives tolerate extreme opposing views. Islam does not. The left have systematically banished martial virtues and values deemed worth fighting for. They don't have the dynamism to stand against the threat they have unleashed. Only conservatives and holdouts for western values retain the dynamism to hold the line and resist Islam as they did in the past.
Israel stands as a front line outpost of Western values against the most autocratic major hegemonic imperialist power the world has ever known. The Communists and Nazis are pikers by comparison. A second Holocaust in the form of the "river to the sea" extirpation of Israel wouldn't obviate jihad, it would reward, empower, and encourage it and move the front toward us, as the jihadists affirm themselves. Enemies of Israel are the enemies of the very same liberal values they contort to slander Israel, as their founding and defining literature affirms. Leftists have sown and continue to sow the wind and if they get their way will reap the tornado.
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@MotiveToKill "why do you think Fascist propaganda would have to be false? "
1. It follows from the fascist leaders not accepting honesty as a value in principle. Such people are not using words to converse, in the human sense, but to manipulate. Fascist propaganda, as described in the fascist's own works, would only be true incidentally (accidentally) , not in principle.
2. In historical fact, fascist propaganda was inaccurate, deceptive in effect and purpose.
"In Fascist nations, showing the "horrors of war" and bodies wouldn't dissuade people, it would encourage them with a sense of revenge because of their love for the country and citizens."
There are more effective ways of instilling sociopathy, and the fascists employed them. Sargon is not contrasting the Federation with your idealistic view of fascism, but with totalitarianism as it actually and invariably exists. Strict censorship is part of both the written theory and history of fascism, and if you don't know that, you don't understand fascism.
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Folks, this so easy to search, why are you all blowing smoke? Deuterium, (Hydrogen isotope 2) the easiest atom to fuse, constitutes just over one out of every ten thousand Hydrogen atoms in ordinary water. It has an ENORMOUSLY LONG half life and heavy water (D2O) is SAFE TO DRINK. The fusion of two Deuterons produces either a Helium -3 nucleus, (which is also considered so stable they won't list a half-life) and an fast neutron; or a Tritium nucleus (Hydrogen isotope 3) which has just over a 12 year half life and beta decays to Helium 3 and a fast proton. The most dangerous radiation from this process is not the nucleus products, but the NEUTRONS released by the process directly.
A more energetic reaction is to fuse 1 Deuterium and 1 Helium-3, producing 1 Protium (Hydrogen isotope 1), and 1 Helium-4 (the common stable isotope pumped into airships and toy balloons) This releases more energy per unit of fuel, and is aneutronic (doesn't generate neutrons to make the reactor radioactive), but it requires much higher energy of fusion, so it is harder to ignite. Also, we do not currently have a supply of Helium-3 in industrial quantities. We could get it from Dee (Deuterium) reactors, but we would have to put up with the neutrons from that reactor. Rather than messing with that, SECOND GENERATION D/Helium-3 reactors may opt to import the Helium-3 from the Moon, it's lighter than garden variety helium (cheaper to transport and stable) and fused with Terrestrial Dee can release a LOT of clean energy. This high energy for low fuel input characteristic (along with the aneutronic property) might also make it the power plant of choice for large spacecraft.
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Absolutely. The US declared war on December 11, 1941. The turning point of Germany's eastern front, prior to which Germany was totally on the offensive was the Battle of Stalingrad (23 August 1942 - 2 February 1943). By the time the Battle of Stalingrad had even begun, the US and UK were already shipping aid in bulk to the Soviet Union, mostly food a first, but constantly trucks and fuel, shipped in by Anglo-American convoys fighting through the German attempt at blockade. The defenders of Stalingrad almost starved as it was, and would certainly have starved without that aid.
By the time the USSR had turned to the offensive, The US had been supplying, and continued to supply, Sherman tanks in vast numbers to all the allies including the Soviet Union. The UK also supplied the USSR with some tanks. The US and the UK also supplied the Soviets with combat and logistics aircraft. 90% of the trucks supporting the Soviet offensive logistical effort were Studebaker trucks shipped in from US factories, and the bulk of the fuel was from the US as well. Without that aid the Soviet offensive would not have been possible logistically or materially.
Shortly after the US declaration of war, the US sent ground forces to aid the British effort to push the Axis powers out of Northern Africa. In November of 1942, the US opened an African front of its own in Operation Torch. The Anglo-American offensive pushed the Axis out of Africa, and deprived them of their main source of oil. This began well before the end of the Stalingrad battle and the start of the Soviet offensive, and paved the way for the subsequent Anglo-American invasions of Sicily and Italy, which took Italy out of the war. This also caused Hitler to divert forces from his eastern to his southern front during the pivotal period.
Moreover, any analysis of the USSRs contribution to the allied war effort is incomplete without factoring in their prior contribution to the Axis war effort. The first Soviet intervention in events was its joint operation with the Reich in the conquest of Poland, accompanied by the non-aggression pact between the USSR and Nazi Germany. Not only that, but the USSR was supporting the Reich with its propaganda and vast amounts of material aid shipped across Poland by rail. While the US was already becoming the Arsenal of Democracy by sending material aid to the UK prior to the declaration of war, the USSR was simultaneously becoming the Arsenal of Despotism by sending material aid to Hitler. The courage of the Soviet peoples in the latter part of the war was commendable, but a complete analysis of the net Soviet contribution to the war must take into account that the problem the USSR helped solve was largely a problem they helped create. The USSR didn't join the allies until they had to do so to survive, and they wouldn't have survived without allied help.
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@antoniojosegarciamelero8598 That's because of 200+ years of immigration, because a lot of people like freedom and opportunity. There is no particular reason to document aboriginal American blood, unless one is looking for an "affirmative action" (the old name for what is now called DEI). I am one sixteenth Cherokee, which is barely enough for preferential treatment under the old affirmative action rules, but when I applied for a government job, I never put that down on my application, because affirmative action is racist. There is a great deal of Aboriginal American blood in my extended family that I know about (not just from my grandfather), and if you look into the matter, a great deal more in the general population than is documented. We never identified on a Census or official document as a racial minority.
From the start in the US there was a great deal of assimilation and intermarriage, though in those days it wasn't something folk would talk about. De Touqueville hints at it even before the Civil War. To this day you see a regional remnant of the aboriginal American tribes in their respective areas in the "white" American population, like the narrow prominent nose of the tribes of the Iroquois Confederation tribes in the Northeast, the round faces and high Cheekbones of the Cherokee in Oklahoma and thereabouts. Aboriginal American culture lives only in the reservations, but Aboriginal American blood is ubiquitous.
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@elsenorgatito " Protestant europe was as bad."
At the start, Protestants thought they had to be as oppressive as the Catholics in self defense, but the freedoms the West once took for granted are an accomplishment of the Protestant Reformation. Protestantism created the modern libertarian west. We (Protestants) abolished slavery throughout Christendom, implemented religious freedom, political freedom, academic freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press FIRST, and thus caused the academic, scientific, technological, and material progress that followed; and most of the rest of the world hasn't caught up with it yet. John 8:32 "You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
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@mesoanarchy "One of these, 'it says socialism in the name' easily duped people."
Here is an excerpt from the Nazi platform, socialist as hell:
7. We demand that the State make it its duty to provide opportunities of employment first of all for its own Citizens. If it is not possible to maintain the entire population of the State, then foreign nationals (non-Citizens) are to be expelled from the Reich. 9. All German Citizens must have equal rights and duties. 10. It must be the first duty of every Citizen to carry out intellectual or physical work. Individual activity must not be harmful to the public interest and must be pursued within the framework of the community and for the general good.We therefore demand: 11. The abolition of all income obtained without labor or effort.Breaking the Servitude of Interest. 12. In view of the tremendous sacrifices in property and blood demanded of the nation by every war, personal gain from the war must be termed a crime against the nation. We therefore demand the total confiscation of all war profits. 13. We demand the nationalization of all enterprises (already) converted into corporations (trusts). 14. We demand profit-sharing in large enterprises. 15. We demand the large-scale development of old-age pension schemes. 16. We demand the creation and maintenance of a sound middle class; the immediate communalization of the large department stores, which are to be leased at low rates to small tradesmen. We demand the most careful consideration for the owners of small businesses in orders placed by national, state, or community authorities. 17. We demand land reform in accordance with our national needs and a law for expropriation without compensation of land for public purposes. Abolition of ground rent and prevention of all speculation in land. 18. We demand ruthless battle against those who harm the common good by their activities. Persons committing base crimes against the People, usurers, profiteers, etc., are to be punished by death without regard to religion or race. 19. We demand the replacement of Roman Law, which serves a materialistic World Order, by German Law. 20. In order to make higher education – and thereby entry into leading positions – available to every able and industrious German, the State must provide a thorough restructuring of our entire public educational system. The courses of study at all educational institutions are to be adjusted to meet the requirements of practical life. Understanding of the concept of the State must be achieved through the schools (teaching of civics) at the earliest age at which it can be grasped. We demand the education at the public expense of specially gifted children of poor parents, without regard to the latters’ position or occupation. 21. The State must raise the level of national health by means of mother-and-child care, the banning of juvenile labor, achievements of physical fitness through legislation for compulsory gymnastics and sports, and maximum support for all organizations providing physical training for young people. .....
25. To carry out all the above we demand: the creation of a strong central authority in the Reich. Unquestioned authority by the political central Parliament over the entire Reich and over its organizations in general. The establishment of trade and professional organizations to enforce the Reich basic laws in the individual states.The Party leadership promises to take an uncompromising stand, at the cost of their own lives if need be, on the enforcement of the above points.Munich, GermanyFebruary 24, 1920.
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I'm a big JP fan, but this doesn't hold up. You're saying:
A. Putin is acquisitive and ambitious and wants to reestablish the Russian empire coterminous with the Soviet.
B. Putin says (and may well believe) that a leftist/atheist/morally libertine subversion has consumed the west and threatens Russia.
C. Russia has economic incentives to control Ukraine.
D. Putin considers Ukraine part of Russia's proper sphere of influence.
E. Putin is determined, locally popular, and controls a substantial nuclear arsenal.
The obvious response is "What aspect of this situation, as you have characterized it , differs from the Cold War? To remind you:
A. The USSR was acquisitive and ambitious and sought to extent Soviet hegemony by military and political means.
B. The USSR said that capitalism enslaved the West and threatens Russia
C. Russia had economic incentives to control the world.
D. The USSR considered western Europe part of their proper sphere of influence.
E. The USSR was determined, had domestic political control, and controlled a (relatively speaking) more powerful conventional and nuclear arsenal than Putin does.
The historical comparison with Hitler is well taken. Both the strategic situation and the justification for the acquisition of Putin's acquisition of Crimea, for example, exactly parallel those of Hitler's acquisition of Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia, and the subsequent invasion of the remainder of those respective countries. But the parallel with the Cold War is even more acute. If we had responded to the Soviet threat as you advocate we respond to the much lesser threat of Putin, we would now be slaves. Of course, we cannot forecast the future with any certainty, but history tells us that, all other things being equal (and such equality must be the default assumption given that we don't know the future) the best time to thwart a serial aggressor is the earliest possible time. This isn't the first time Putin has invaded a neighbor (Georgia, Crimea), and we have no reason to believe that capitulation will make it the last. Further:
A. Reestablishing the hegemony exerted by the Soviet Union would involve the conquest of Latvia, Lithuania, and the former Warsaw Pact countries, including Poland.
B. What does your clinical expertise and experience tell you about the PRACTICALITY of flattering the delusions of the deluded?
C. The economic incentives you mention do not constitute what would be considered in a court of law to be mitigating factors, but what such a court would call MOTIVE.
D. A formative principle of modern civilization is that one's sphere of influence ends where one's neighbor's nose begins. Russian populism may regard Ukraine as a part of the greater Russian culture, but this Russian view is a product of a century of self serving propaganda by Russian governments. For Ukrainians, Russian hegemony has been oppressive and bloody. Putin's stated desire of a pro-Russian government in Ukraine is, for historical reasons, incompatible with a DEMOCRATIC government in Ukraine, and changing THAT state of affairs would involve at minimum a few decades of establishing themselves as a good neighbor. Doubling down on the historical oppression will not "win the hearts and minds" of Ukrainians.
E. You impress upon us the gravity of the dangers that face us. Yet you're nearly as old as I am! Is this a new concept to you? Freedom has always lived under the threat of violence and under that of nuclear violence from geriatric autocrats since the 1950s. Assertions in the 90s of the "end of history" were predictably premature (as well as self serving on the part of the advocates. I never bought the notion for a minute). Every neighbor we feed to an aggressor strengthens the aggressor materially and in terms of morale, and undermines the MORAL case for us to maintain our continued freedom. We either favor democratic self-determination or we don't.
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When did he state or imply that there wasn't? The Western tradition changed the world to a more profound degree than any independent tradition, and the world has embraced Western culture. Japanese and Chinese and Indian musicians on the highest level master Western music.
Protestantism created the modern libertarian west. We (Protestants) ended slavery; implemented religious freedom, political freedom, academic freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press FIRST, and thus caused the academic, scientific, technological, and material progress that followed; and most of the rest of the world hasn't caught up with it yet. John 8:32 "You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
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The British Christian tradition is not the same as the US religious tradition, and the latter does not reduce to fundamentalism. However, Protestantism created the modern libertarian west. We (Protestants) ended slavery; implemented religious freedom, political freedom, academic freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press FIRST, and thus caused the academic, scientific, technological, and material progress that followed; and most of the rest of the world hasn't caught up with it. What remains of the traditions of Western liberty abide withering as a cut flower, and cannot ultimately outlast their roots.
Even such an inveterate opponent of Christianity as Richard Dawkins, who once signed a petition to Parliament to make religious instruction of minor children by parents illegal, now has taken to calling himself a "cultural Christian" as he realizes that modern secularism doesn't have what it takes to fend off Islam. If you can't find your way back to the tradition of Christendom, then I'm sorry, son, you're buggered. Without it, the values that define the West are hanging in epistemological and pedagogical air.
Not that I would try to advocate Christianity on purely utilitarian terms. "He who would come to God must believe that He is, and that He is a Rewarder of those who diligently seek Him." If you are unfamiliar with the evidence for Christianity, it is because you haven't looked. But trying to return to the liberal traditions of the West without returning to Christ is just a contradiction of terms.
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Post modernism is poison for the scholarly pursuits because it dismisses the only valid tools we have for the pursuit of truth, indeed dogmatically denies the notion of objective truth. It illegitimately sublimates Bulverism from a category of fallacy (which it actually is) to a PRINCIPLE!
Quote from Bulverism by C. S. Lewis:
You must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong. The modern method is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became so silly.
In the course of the last fifteen years I have found this vice so common that I have had to invent a name for it. I call it "Bulverism". Some day I am going to write the biography of its imaginary inventor, Ezekiel Bulver, whose destiny was determined at the age of five when he heard his mother say to his father — who had been maintaining that two sides of a triangle were together greater than a third — "Oh you say that because you are a man." "At that moment", E. Bulver assures us, "there flashed across my opening mind the great truth that refutation is no necessary part of argument. Assume that your opponent is wrong, and explain his error, and the world will be at your feet. Attempt to prove that he is wrong or (worse still) try to find out whether he is wrong or right, and the natural dynamism of our age will thrust you to the wall." That is how Bulver became one of the makers of the Twentieth Century.
Suppose I think, after doing my accounts, that I have a large balance at the bank. And suppose you want to find out whether this belief of mine is "wishful thinking." You can never come to any conclusion by examining my psychological condition. Your only chance of finding out is to sit down and work through the sum yourself. When you have checked my figures, then, and then only, will you know whether I have that balance or not. If you find my arithmetic correct, then no amount of vapouring about my psychological condition can be anything but a waste of time. If you find my arithmetic wrong, then it may be relevant to explain psychologically how I came to be so bad at my arithmetic, and the doctrine of the concealed wish will become relevant — but only after you have yourself done the sum and discovered me to be wrong on purely arithmetical grounds. It is the same with all thinking and all systems of thought. If you try to find out which are tainted by speculating about the wishes of the thinkers, you are merely making a fool of yourself. You must first find out on purely logical grounds which of them do, in fact, break down as arguments. Afterwards, if you like, go on and discover the psychological causes of the error.
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"the West peaked after WW2 when we didn't have big governments. The government is not our friend."
Absolutely. I might quibble about the timeline. Allied governments were definitely larger after the World Wars than before. Centralization and taxation measures arguably necessary for the war and adopted and defended as wartime expedients somehow stuck to the government's fingers after the war and have expanded since. ("A couple of weeks to flatten the curve" "Never let a crisis go to waste.") The UK extended "wartime" rationing and other economic control measures past the end of the war. In the US, the income tax was supposed to be a temporary measure to fund WW 1, but has been with us to this day, even in the early interwar period when the US wasn't doing much in the way of military preparation. But your point stands; western governments are larger now as a percentage of larger GDPs than they were then.
"They lust for power, as they always have.... power and control, doesn't matter what political system you live in. In democracies, it's just a little harder to gain control..."
Often the the system of the US republic is compared unfavorably with a parliamentary system, for instance, on the grounds of efficiency. The parliamentary supposedly more rapidly implements the sense of the majority. Such critics are mistaking a means for an end. The founders of the US constitutional republic were concerned with dissipating power, of keeping it from being concentrated and thus facilitating tyranny. Democracy is just one, even if the most important and radical, of the means to this end. "Checks and balances" were placed throughout the system. Gridlock is a feature, not a bug. Democracy may well be necessary to sustain freedom, but it is certainly INSUFFICIENT. The general recognition that there are some things even the majority must not be allowed to do is vital to any sort of freedom or human rights.
C.S. Lewis:
I believe in political equality. But there are two opposite reasons for being a democrat. You may think all men so good that they deserve a share in the government of the commonwealth, and so wise that the commonwealth needs their advice. That is, in my opinion, the false, romantic doctrine of democracy. On the other hand, you may believe fallen men to be so wicked that not one of them can be trusted with any irresponsible power over his fellows.
That I believe to be the true ground of democracy. I do not believe that God created an egalitarian world. I believe the authority of parent over child, husband over wife, learned over simple, to have been as much a part of the original plan as the authority of man over beast. I believe that if we had not fallen...patriarchal monarchy would be the sole lawful government. But since we have learned sin, we have found, as Lord Acton says, that ‘all power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.’ The authority of father and husband has been rightly abolished on the legal plane, not because this authority is in itself bad (on the contrary, it is, I hold, divine in origin) but because fathers and husbands are bad. Theocracy has been rightly abolished not because it is bad that learned priests should govern ignorant laymen, but because priests are wicked men like the rest of us. Even the authority of man over beast has had to be interfered with because it is constantly abused. [C.S. Lewis. “Membership,” in Fern Seed and Elephants (London: Fontana, 1975), 18-19]
I am a democrat because I believe in the Fall of Man. I think most people are democrats for the opposite reason. A great deal of democratic enthusiasm descends from the ideas of people like Rousseau, who believed in democracy because they thought mankind so wise and good that everyone deserved a share in the government… The real reason for democracy is just the reverse. Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows. Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters. [C.S. Lewis, Present Concerns, ed. Walter Hooper (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986), 17]
James Madison from the Federalist Papers (documents concerning the adoption of the U.S. Constitution):
The great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. The provision for defense must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of attack. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.
A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions. [James Madison, from Federalist 51]
"Why does the government get to take more than 50% of my earnings? Why do they get to tell me IF I can build on a piece of land and what I build? Why do they get to tell me everything?
I just want to be left alone and do my own thing..."
There is a quote about this I can't remember or attribute, but something to the effect that the whole end of government is for a man to be at peace at home. The sole and indispensable function of and justification for government is the minimum necessary to force people to mind their own business, because left to themselves many will not.
A common fallacy of utopian ideologues is that human nature is inherently good, but is being held back by some flaw in the social contract. In fact, the same flawed, imperfect, selfish, stupid nature that infests the lord, or the "capitalist", infests the politician and bureaucrat. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The "capitalist" AS SUCH, can only hire or bribe, and regulations and laws are in place to keep his abuses in check. An authoritarian government can do that (with other people's money), plus arrest you or your family. It is incoherent to fear the former and not fear the latter. No "angel" is available to bear this power benignly.
"Government is a dangerous servant; and a fearful master."
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The left/right dichotomy goes back to Revolutionary France. And the left were the more radical censors from the start. In the early 20th century in US politics Woodrow Wilson's "progressives", recognized by one and all as "left" were advocates of socialism, Jim Crow laws, and eugenics. When Hitler and Mussolini rose in Europe, everybody acknowledged that Fascism and Nazism were phenomena of the left. Until Operation Barbarossa, the Soviet Union was providing the Reich with war material in bulk by rail, and favoring them with their propaganda. It is only after the war, when Hitler "gave eugenics a bad name" that the left started promoting the idea that Nazis and Fascists were on the "right", which used to mean "traditional" and "liberal" and the like.
Protestantism created the modern libertarian west. We (Protestants) ended slavery; implemented religious freedom, political freedom, academic freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press FIRST, and thus caused the academic, scientific, technological, and material progress that followed; and most of the rest of the world hasn't caught up with it yet. John 8:32 "You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
Cancel culture is exactly about trying to settle a point of fact by the use of force. That is always obscurantist, every time.
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@jsusbdndk1362 "capitalism is based on individual initiative while socialism is based government. Both act on production of goods and services, it’s just a matter of who controls it"
As though who controls goods and services cannot possibly have any effect on the production of goods and services.
The socialist disconnect between productivity and incentives has been elaborated on. It is the aspect of socialism which impoverishes the society, and gives the lie to the altruistic pretensions of its advocates. The common folk of a socialist society are uniformly poorer than their counterparts in a free one, in addition to being sorely oppressed and hampered and proscribed at every turn.
Freedom of opportunity and property rights have created the wealthiest societies in the world. Have created societies where the "poor" have a material position far more advantageous than the kings under former systems. That is where wealth and opportunity are made. If your ideology is actually better then "improve" some 3rd world country and out-compete the rest of the world. That is how freedom proved itself, by providing the greatest benefit to all, and to the least gifted in particular. "Capitalism" is Marx's straw man, equating freedom with rule by robber barons.
If you are really concerned with human suffering and oppression, why do you always seek to "improve" the freest, most prosperous, and most equitable societies, rather than liberating the actually oppressed? It is almost as if you are more concerned with pulling down the rich than lifting up the poor.
In fact, and historically in practice, despotism results, and the reason why IS AN INHERENT FLAW OF THE THEORY. You seek to replace the free market with an arbitrary distribution of stuff. To do this you need an arbiter. The arbiter does not BECOME, he IS by nature of his function, the dictator. You, first, remove all the protections, restraints, checks and balances of the civic society, (often accompanied by the removal of checks on the conscience from religion,) give absolute power (in a sense greater even than the kings and emperors of old) to a person or a group, already acclimated to a free hand in the use of force when they steal everybody's stuff. Then you wonder why so many get murdered by your just and equitable and scientific government, and why life in your utopia is so similar to slavery.
In fact this similarity was recognized, and embraced by George Fitzhugh,19th century leftist and southern slavery advocate of the "positive good" school, that is, of those who insisted that slavery was good for the slave. (source, Dinesh D'Sousa "Death of a Nation") Like Wolff, of course, he characterizes the relationship between the wage worker and capital as oppressive. He goes further in comparing it unfavorably with slavery, claiming that the supposed freedom of choice of the wage worker is illusory and the wage worker is a "slave without a master", that is, in his construction, without a person obligated and motivated to "take care" of him. "The maxim, every man for himself embraces the whole moral code of a free society. The rich are continually growing richer and the poor poorer." Freedom is a "war of the rich, with the poor, and the poor with one another."
By way of contrast, he finds in slavery a sort of commune "in which the master furnishes the capital and skill, and the slaves the labor, and divide the profits, not according to each one's in-put, but according to each one's wants and necessities." He called the contemporary socialist theory "an ever receding and illusory Utopia." Slavery, he insists, is an existing and the only practical form of socialism, achieving "the ends all Communists and Socialists desire."
The common thread, is that to the libertarian sensibility essential freedom is freedom TO (to act), and to the socialist is freedom FROM (from responsibilities, uncertainties).
James Madison in Federalist 51, states the obvious that eludes these ivory tower theorists:
"The great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. The provision for defense must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of attack. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions."
A common fallacy of utopian ideologues is that human nature is inherently good, but is being held back by some flaw in the social contract. In fact, the same flawed, imperfect, selfish, stupid nature that infests the lord, or the "capitalist", infests the revolutionary. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The "capitalist" AS SUCH, can only hire or bribe. An unchecked authoritarian government can do that (with other people's money), plus arrest, torture, and kill you or your family. It is incoherent to fear the former and not fear the latter. No "angel" is available to bear this power benignly. It is not just the resources that rampant government spending removes from the productive sector, removing incentives to productivity, it is the dangerous further unnecessary concentration of power in the most dangerous place possible. This would be harmful even if the resources spent were beamed down by well meaning space aliens.
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@Andrea-di2ew "It has to be said that the most ancient preserved bibles are actually in greek, not in hebrew. They are older by many centuries, so it is not like, when reading the hebrew bible, we are actually reading the source in its original form (which has been lost to time)"
There is significant nuance missing from this statement. First of all, using New Testament textual criticism as an exemplar, and comparing with the Septuagint and the Old Testament Hebrew and Aramaic parts of the roughly first centure Dead Sea Scrolls, we have every reason to believe that the copying of sacred texts was careful and not as error-prone as ordinary scribal procedure. Second the Dead Sea Scrolls give us a SAMPLE of portions of the Tanakh in the original language which is NOT many centuries later as the oldest Masoritic scrolls are. Second, there is always some loss of meaning in translation. Loss is POSSIBLE in copying, with the best of intentions. Loss is INEVITABLE in translation, with the best of intentions. Due to it's antiquity and independence from extant Hebrew textual traditions, the Septuagint is IMPORTANT for textual criticism and etymology, but still not DISPOSITIVE.
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There is no Israeli in Israel living on land which was expropriated from it's private owner by Israel. They are living on land they BOUGHT. Israel upholds private property rights and the rule of law, just the same as other nations in the Western civilizational tradition. For centuries in Islamic ruled lands, property "rights" of "dhimis" (Jews and Christians) were subject to arbitrary abbrogation. Muslims think this is their right. That is part of the program, to seize the purchased property of non-Muslims along with improvements without compensation.
In the US and most Western nations the fount of sovereign legitimacy is the "consent of the governed". Unlike any other polity in the region, the government of Israel is democratically elected. Arab, Muslim, Christian, and atheist citizens in Israel have full rights including the vote, which is unique in the region. Foreigners traveling in Israel have full protection of Israeli law which is not afforded to natives in neighboring nations.
The "Palestinian problem" is an artifact of a colonial power trying to hold on to control. The Mandate administration brought in and cultivated a criminal element to serve their private interest and subvert the Mandate. The Jews aren't squatters, the Palestinians are. There is no consistent standard whereby the Palestinians are entitled to sovereignty, and the Israelis are not, and the Palestinians won't negotiate to form a compromise which allows for the existence of Israel.
At the end of WW2, disputed and other territories part of Germany and Japan before the war. were transferred to other polities. It is an established principle that the aggressor who tries to seize territory can be punished by losing territory instead when he loses.
In every sense and category, the anti-Israel zealots apply an unequal standard against her. By priority, by international law, by natural law principle, by conquest, by democratic vote, by every standard which has ever historically been recognized to convey title, Israel's current borders are legitimate. The counter-narrative is a construct of leftist enmity for the West which entails an alliance with the enemies of the West. The left has been an enemy of Israel ever since the 1960s when the Soviet Union sided with Israel's enemies. Israel's sovereignty is legitimate, Israel's survival is legitimate, and there cannot be a two state solution until Palestinians are willing to accept a two-state solution.
The current libel has two buzzwords, "apartheid" and "genocide". In the defining example of the first term, blacks in South Africa during apartheid did not have the right to vote or equal protection under the law. Therefore, the term is slander. The Palestinians have been completely in Israel's power at least since the 1960s. If genocide were Israel's policy, the Palestinians would be extinct, instead of more populous than ever. If genocide where the current war policy, Israel wouldn't be issuing warnings to the Palestinian populace about future targets, granting safe corridors for flight, or committing ground troops early accepting increased casualties in their military to minimized civilian casualties. The genocide charge is also slander.
In the current conflict Israel is conducting total war by the same rules the Anglophone Allies played by in the Second World War. Those rules did not preclude civilian casualties then, and they don't now. Fortunately, at that time the adults were in charge else those very rules would by now be a relic from a banned history book.
Leftists have fondly imagined themselves using Islamic jihad as a tool to destroy the West, then taking over and stealing the revolution. Events unfolding in Europe are beginning to awaken them to the fact that they don't have what it takes to prevail against their erstwhile allies. Conservatives tolerate extreme opposing views. Islam does not. The left have systematically banished martial virtues and values deemed worth fighting for. They don't have the dynamism to stand against the threat they have unleashed. Only conservatives and holdouts for western values retain the dynamism to hold the line and resist Islam as they did in the past.
Israel stands as a front line outpost of Western values against the most autocratic major hegemonic imperialist power the world has ever known. The Communists and Nazis are pikers by comparison. A second Holocaust in the form of the "river to the sea" extirpation of Israel wouldn't obviate jihad, it would reward, empower, and encourage it and move the front toward us, as the jihadists affirm themselves. Enemies of Israel are the enemies of the very same liberal values they contort to slander Israel, as their founding and defining literature affirms. Leftists have sown and continue to sow the wind and if they get their way will reap the tornado.
PERSONAL freedom is the only meaningful sort. "Group freedom" is invariably a smoke screen for tyranny. Taiwan votes to maintain its democracy, group freedom says mainland China owns them because they're Chinese. Northern Ireland votes to remain in the UK, group freedom says Ireland owns them because they're Irish. Many Blacks in the US vote Republican, Joe Biden and many other Democrats say the Democrat Party owns them because they're Black. (My! That sounds familiar!) Hitler says the destiny of Germany is important and Germans are being oppressed, he proceeds to steal other countries and murder racial minorities.
Legitimate political organizations group to protect personal freedom from threats. That is the lone and essential purpose of government: to FORCE people to mind their own business. Because left to themselves, THEY WILL NOT.
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"Jews being shipped to Palestine post WW2 is by definition a refugee status."
The difference is that the Jews forced to flee Arab countries are not considered to have a "right to return" to get compensated for the real estate and other property they couldn't take with them, much less assert the right to displace those who forced them to leave.
"dis proportionate slaughter of Palestinian civilians"
Proportion isn't relevant. The point of the exercise is to end the terrorist attacks. The Israelis are waging total war by the same rules the Western Allies did in World War 2. Those rules didn't preclude civilian casualties then, and they don't now. Fortunately the adults were in charge then, or else we wouldn't be having this conversation.
"the desire to return to Israel to the Right to ownership and control of that section of the region"
The only "region" Israel is not willing to negotiate about is the region they were granted by international law, the land they BOUGHT. If they had been left alone in the land they had legal sovereignty over, which they bought and improved with their own hands, there would be no "Palestinian issue". The Palestinians demand the extirpation of the Jews from Israeli land, all of it, and genocide is their preferred method. If that's OK with you, you're a monster, whether motivated by Jew hatred or a desire to destroy Western civilization.
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@happygofishing Blanket Bulverism. Your ideas can't compete in rational engagement so you close your eyes, cover ears and scream "there are no such things as arguments". Rather than engage ideas rationally, you posit an irrational or ignoble motive or cause to give yourself and your readers an excuse to dismiss ideas without consideration. You promote ideas with power which won't stand rational scrutiny, and assert "there is no rationality, just power." That's like Marx, "All arguments are a result of class conditioning" (except the argument I make when I say this). All such "proofs" that there are no such things as proofs make tacit and unjustified exception in favor of their own "reasoning". Only authoritarians do this. And they accuse others of doing the same, "Accuse your opponents of doing what you're doing" - Saul Alinsky.
Quote from Bulverism by C. S. Lewis:
You must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong. The modern method is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became so silly.
In the course of the last fifteen years I have found this vice so common that I have had to invent a name for it. I call it "Bulverism". Some day I am going to write the biography of its imaginary inventor, Ezekiel Bulver, whose destiny was determined at the age of five when he heard his mother say to his father — who had been maintaining that two sides of a triangle were together greater than a third — "Oh you say that because you are a man." "At that moment", E. Bulver assures us, "there flashed across my opening mind the great truth that refutation is no necessary part of argument. Assume that your opponent is wrong, and explain his error, and the world will be at your feet. Attempt to prove that he is wrong or (worse still) try to find out whether he is wrong or right, and the natural dynamism of our age will thrust you to the wall." That is how Bulver became one of the makers of the Twentieth Century.
Suppose I think, after doing my accounts, that I have a large balance at the bank. And suppose you want to find out whether this belief of mine is "wishful thinking." You can never come to any conclusion by examining my psychological condition. Your only chance of finding out is to sit down and work through the sum yourself. When you have checked my figures, then, and then only, will you know whether I have that balance or not. If you find my arithmetic correct, then no amount of vapouring about my psychological condition can be anything but a waste of time. If you find my arithmetic wrong, then it may be relevant to explain psychologically how I came to be so bad at my arithmetic, and the doctrine of the concealed wish will become relevant — but only after you have yourself done the sum and discovered me to be wrong on purely arithmetical grounds. It is the same with all thinking and all systems of thought. If you try to find out which are tainted by speculating about the wishes of the thinkers, you are merely making a fool of yourself. You must first find out on purely logical grounds which of them do, in fact, break down as arguments. Afterwards, if you like, go on and discover the psychological causes of the error.
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+hcheyne
starts the thread:
"He does realise that the US has had 2 end time evangelicals with their finger on the button.?"
One presumes this is a response to Harris:
[nuclear deterrence by mutual assured destruction"falls apart once you admit to yourself that it's possible that truly suicidal religious maniacs can get their hands on these weapons. So all I was calling for is our awareness that that really is a game changer. And we have to avoid that at all cost."
hcheyne's reply does not really resolve into anything like a point. If he is trying to challenge Harris' logic he might well mean "Two truly suicidal religious maniacs had access to nuclear weapons and nothing happened." The two obvious responses are:
1. End time evangelicals are not truly suicidal religious maniacs
2. If they had been, nuclear war would have resulted, obviously.
+mage davee (a response to thread opener, not a response to above remarks)
" That's really problem with Sam Harris arguments, he treats Islam as if it's a special kind of crazy, then really the Abrahamic faiths are all basically the same."
"...They all preach violence,.."
Violence is pretty much a given on the Earth. As we are placed, violence is necessarily right in one situation and wrong in another. Pacifism is immoral.
" they all have crazy beliefs that have to do with end of world and paradise..."
Ony one of them says that dying in the process of killing infidels is a ticket to paridise, which is the crux of Harris' argument.
"and they are all used justify violence and oppression...."
Everything is used to justify violence and oppression.
"The only difference is in America is you are much more likely to have this happen to you by Christian then by a Muslim, "
I presume that the "this" in the above sentence is violence and oppression. Blatant lie.
According to the Religious Landscape Survey, about 70% of residents of US identify as Christian, about 1% identify as Muslim. Are you 70 times more likely in the US to be killed or persecuted by a Christian than an Muslim? Nowhere near. You certainly are not 70 times more likely to be persecuted by a Christian motivated by his faith than a Muslim motivated by his. And I can't imagine you hope to fool anyone into believing you are.
" in fact the Christian in this country hold quite bit of political power..."
That's why we are the freest nation on the face of the Earth. The nations founded on atheist principles are no more free than those founded on Islam.
"and have used their religion for justification for war."
Lets see, United States wars:
Revolutionary War - "Chester" - check
War of 1812 - "The Star Spangled Banner" - check
Civil War - "Battle Hymn of the Republic" - check
World War 2 - "Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition" - check
Well, congratulations on managing to construct a sentence, or at least a clause, that wasn't purely bogus. I'm sure it was accidental. But these are the only major wars which Christianity weighed in on to any great extent, and it remains to be shown that this was a bad thing.
"...in the US or Europe, almost none of the terrorist attacks are from Muslims, in the US they only account for 6%, and less then 2% in Europe. The majority of attacks come Christian groups."
This is utterly absurd. It is true that many of the governments of the west seem reluctant to attribute the acts of Islamic jihad to Islamic jihad, so that might skew the official figures somewhat. But since 9-11, you can't seriously claim that Christians have committed acts of terrorism in anything like the same numbers, even if you throw out 9-11 itself. Or, you can claim it, but you can't back it up.
"The problem is paradise and martyrdom are not Islamic ideas, but rather borrowed ideas from Christianity and Judaism."
Islam's innovation is to connect paradise and martyrdom with killing infidels.
" You know who isn't blowing himself up, the guy who has food shelter, security, and stability."
Mostly not, no: he is funding and facilitating those who do. Bin Ladin was rich. The sheiks funding wahabist teachers in western mosques are rich. Saddam Hussein who enriched the families of Palestinian suicide bombers in Israel was rich. There is provision for this in the Koran. Contribution to jihad can be of wealth. If you are wealthy this is ideal. Cheaper to fund than to die. Islam gives the poor fewer options.
mage davee then goes off on an historical tangent about the KKK. Well, to understand historical phenomena you need a little history. After the Civil War, there was an insurgency against the occupation called the Ku Klux Klan. It was suppressed by the occupation forces and reconstruction government law enforcement. When reconstruction ended the KKK was resurrected as the terrorist arm of the Democrat party. The depredations of the Klan mostly enjoyed de facto immunity because the local governments were controlled by Democrats. As the south became Republican, the Klan lost simultaneously their popular support and their immunity. The part of this story which has the most direct connection to Christianity is the fact that the victorious opposition was led by (Christian) reverend and lifelong Republican Martin Luther King, Jr. (Do you notice a subtle difference between Christian and Islamic notions of martyrdom?) But, there were Christians (and atheists, and Jews, and everybody else) on both sides. There is no objective reason to attribute KKK to Christianity particularly. As I stated above EVERYTHING has been used to justify oppression.
" the regions where extremism exist are regions that West through Colonial and Cold War policies have exploited,"
like India, the Philippines, Hong Kong?
"Your statement clearly shows that you not only ignorant of the koran, you are also ignorant of the bible. Neither rewards murder with heaven. Both books instruct their followers to kill non believers."
Some places in the Old Testament ordered certain Jews to kill certain others. Nowhere in the Bible or any Jewish authoritative religious work are believers in general encouraged to kill unbelievers in general. This is specifically enjoined in the Koran. You either have not read the books yourself or are deliberately trying to bluff, gambling on the ignorance of the reader. In general Christains and Jews are not as ignorant of their scriptures, or nowadays even of the Koran, as you hope.
"FYI. End time Evangelicals keep trying to have a war in the middle east because they want to trigger end times so they can ascend to heaven. So you could not be more wrong."
No, we don't. And you have not a scrap of evidence that indicates we do. Evangelicals do not believe that we can precipitate the apocalypse. Nor do we believe that if we killed people trying to do so, God would reward us for it.
"10 years ago a Christian leader called for a Crusade(which basically means Jihad, except that Jihad doesn't usually mean war) against Iraq for weapons of mass Destruction. After 10 years of war, we leave the war zone with no Infrastructure a wrecked economy, over million civilians dead, and we didn't find one single WMD, and you think it's their religion is the reason they are applauding?"
The policy adopted after 9-11, and generally accepted in the west, was to take military action against state sponsors of terror. That was the main case W made for the Iraq war, and Saddam was guilty. Evidence was found for this after the war. The terrorist training camps were found. Abul Abbas was found retiring in short term comfort there. Since this did not fit the narrative of W's political detractors, emphasis was placed on the small part of the speech that was not confirmed. JWB also said in that speech that British Intelligence reported that Iraq was negotiating with an African nation to obtain yellow cake uranium. No evidence of an active nuclear program was found in Iraq. This does not make the British report false, nor does it make nuclear deproliferation the reason for the war.
"You are living in a time and location vacuum. Reagan and the Bushes ordered the death of far more Muslims than every Muslim terrorist or military act against Christian in the last 30 years. Terrorism is not just when it happens to you."
You are living in a time and location vacuum. More Muslims killed than westerners does not mean that the west started the war. It just means we are winning.
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"It was the British that destabilised the region by gifting the Jews Israel."
The British recognized Israeli national sovereignty over the land the Arabs privately sold them (planning and later trying to murder them and steal it back). The Arabs have repeatedly rejected any peace settlement, including two state solutions.
"It was the US that further destabilised the region by toppling moderate secular governments in Iraq, Iran and Syria so they could control oil prices and fight the Russians, and it was the Americans, and the British again that empowered the radical extremist, by training the Mujaheddin and the Taliban, and favouring Wa Hadist [sic] states like Saudi Arabia."
An ally of the Soviet Union was by definition not a moderate secular government, and fighting the Soviets was a matter of survival, for Islam as much as for us.
"As far as I am concerned all fundamentalists are prone to ideological violence."
The word fundamentalist was originally coined by certain evangelical denominations but was later extended to certain Islamic groups by "progressives" in a tendentious attempt to equate the dissimilar and discredit the former. It is not a term Islam uses itself, but a western notion applied to serve western political ends. Your prejudice against Christians has been amply demonstrated, but poorly justified.
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"Conservatism" in current US parlance is a broad term covering many ideas which are at least partly independent of another: religious freedom, moral retrenchment, strong defense, fiscal responsibility, limited government, civil rights, libertarian ideas. Some of these are partly in tension with one another. Mr. Rubin, before striking out on his own, was part of the Young Turks network. He left that connection, and modern leftism, over what he saw as oppressive authoritarianism and tendentious obscurantism on the part of the side he had called his own. He at first was trying to restrain the excesses of the left from within, but he said something like, "Increasingly I find that defending my classical liberal values is regarded as a conservative position." He still is not quite comfortable with calling himself a conservative. Between him and his guests, you should be able to glean a good notion of what conservatism is about. Another source would be Praeger University, here on U-tube, providing 5 minute introductions to conservative views on various subjects.
Conservatives are eager to talk to him, because he will conduct a civil conversation with his guests based on reason, even those with whom he disagrees. Leftist won't for some reason (I would suppose the same reason).
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+Albert Rogers
"The relative harmlessness of Christianity is solely dependent upon the
proportion of "believers" who don't believe all the stuff in the Bible."
The freedoms you enjoy are mostly a result of believers, simply. Now you can deny this and double down on your disinformation, but I can document everything I say, so save us all some time and yourself some embarrassment. The realm of the freedoms you take for granted is currently called the west. It used to be called Christendom. Christianity having been rejected, it is now degenerating. We don't have to guess what would form a society based on atheism would take, we have prime historical examples: Nazi Germany, the Soviet Bloc, and the remnants of that train wreck like Communist China, N Korea, and Cuba all serve as experimental data.
"If getting a virgin pregnant isn't rape, what is it?"
You apparently don't know what virginity or rape are, this sentence makes no sense.
"If Jesus of Galilee existed"
It is the firm consensus of historians that he did. If you don't even know that then you don't know anything about the first century worth listening to.
The book of Acts has a couple being slain for lying to a prophet about what they gave. Peter's words to Ananias makes it clear he was under no compulsion, so his lie was as petty as it was vile. Ch 5:
4 Whiles it remained, was it not thine own? and after it was sold, was it not in thine own power? why hast thou conceived this thing in thine heart? thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God.
"But far worse, the very first book of the Bible has God destroying an
entire city for being full of homosexuals and people who didn't 'believe
in Him'."
If you read the passage of the destruction of Sodom and the rescue of Lot, you knew that Sodom was full of rapists and other criminal violence. You read rape where it is absent and ignore it where it is present. The passage does not reference their religion, as you implied.
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No, Pat, Germany was largely post Christian already, but the religious
affiliation of the populace is irrelevant in a dictatorship. I said the
Nazi state was founded on atheistic principles by atheistic leaders, a
chief driver of the policies of the Nazis was eugenics, a scientific
program for the propagation of a healthy race. Both the open policies
and the internal plans of the Nazi regime were hostile to Christianity.
As for Hitler himself:
"I shall never come personally to terms with the Christian lie," Hitler confessed (audio transcribed in Hitler's Table Talk [1941-44]).
"It would always be disagreeable for me to go down to posterity as a
man who made concessions in this field [to be labeled a Christian]."Did
Adolf Hitler ever call himself a Christian? Certainly. He did so, and
as he would later admit, for the singular purpose of disseminating
political propaganda."To whom should propaganda be addressed?" he
wrote. "It must be addressed always and exclusively to the masses. ...
The whole art consists in doing this so skillfully that everyone will be
convinced that the fact is real."
Hitler used the convenient fact that the Lutheran Church was the established Church of Germany to impose his own officials and sensor the sermons, and he outlawed may other denominations outright.Opposition to this course and opposition to Hitler's early measures against the Jews was concentrated in the Confessing Church, which was the body of Lutheran congregations and pastors unwilling to cooperate with the co-opting of the Church for Hitler's ends.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/13/weekinreview/word-for-word-case-against-nazis-hitler-s-forces-planned-destroy-german.html
The most prominent figure in the Confessing Church was Deitrich Bonhoeffer, who in addition to his work with the Confessing Church, personally helped Jews escape Germany during the war and was executed just before the end of the war in Europe for his part in the plan to assassinate Hitler.
For Christians helping Jews escape Europe, see your local holocaust museum.
For a bio of Bonhoeffer, with an emphasis on his activities with the Confessing Church, see Eric Metaxas' _Bonhoeffer_,
For a specific account of Christians smuggling Jews out of the Holocaust, see Corrie Ten Boom's The Hiding _Place_.
Many of the soldiers in the regular army were Christians, but no Christians were allowed in the SS, and the Hitler Youth were required to sever all ties with the Church. The Nazi regime was one of atheist leaders riding an atheist ideology, to atheist, and even specifically anti-theist ends. That is what I claimed, and the substance of that claim is well documented. Calling the truth dumb won't make it go away.
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I assume you meant something like "Stop being a warmonger, man, and I know the war never ended." Even that is not a rational reply to my refutation of the concept that NK can be attacked for no reason. It is just name calling and Bulverism. It is irrelevant to the refutation in 2 ways:
1. Refuting your fallacy does not make me a warmonger.
2. If I were a warmonger it would not affect the fact that I refuted your fallacy.
The term "warmonger" is only good for irrational and tendentious name calling anyway. It IMPLIES that the target is a person who likes war and will advocate it at every opportunity. In practical terms of how it is used it only really MEANS a person who advocates a war you don't advocate. And if you read my post carefully, I did not even do that. You vastly misrepresented a point of fact in your original post. I corrected your error. That's it. I did not advocate a course of action.
From Bulverism by C. S. Lewis:
/quote
You must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong. The modern method is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became so silly.
In the course of the last fifteen years I have found this vice so common that I have had to invent a name for it. I call it "Bulverism". Some day I am going to write the biography of its imaginary inventor, Ezekiel Bulver, whose destiny was determined at the age of five when he heard his mother say to his father — who had been maintaining that two sides of a triangle were together greater than a third — "Oh you say that because you are a man." "At that moment", E. Bulver assures us, "there flashed across my opening mind the great truth that refutation is no necessary part of argument. Assume that your opponent is wrong, and explain his error, and the world will be at your feet. Attempt to prove that he is wrong or (worse still) try to find out whether he is wrong or right, and the national dynamism of our age will thrust you to the wall." That is how Bulver became one of the makers of the Twentieth Century.
...
Suppose I think, after doing my accounts, that I have a large balance at the bank. And suppose you want to find out whether this belief of mine is "wishful thinking." You can never come to any conclusion by examining my psychological condition. Your only chance of finding out is to sit down and work through the sum yourself. When you have checked my figures, then, and then only, will you know whether I have that balance or not. If you find my arithmetic correct, then no amount of vapouring about my psychological condition can be anything but a waste of time. If you find my arithmetic wrong, then it may be relevant to explain psychologically how I came to be so bad at my arithmetic, and the doctrine of the concealed wish will become relevant — but only after you have yourself done the sum and discovered me to be wrong on purely arithmetical grounds. It is the same with all thinking and all systems of thought. If you try to find out which are tainted by speculating about the wishes of the thinkers, you are merely making a fool of yourself. You must first find out on purely logical grounds which of them do, in fact, break down as arguments. Afterwards, if you like, go on and discover the psychological causes of the error.
/unquote
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+MrZapparin
"You actually believe NK is a danger to USA, or that they're seriously going to attack SK, or Japan."
NK has never ceased to assert that they are, and that they will, and appears to be vigorously upgrading its ability to, do all of those bad things.
". If NK has nukes, then they are at even odds. "
Securing our freedom is not about giving the bad guys a fair chance to screw things up.
" if the NKs want to get rid of The Dear Leader, then it's up to them, not us. Who are we to decide on their behalf" [sic]
What the people of NK want is unknown, and under the current regime, unknowable. It is not a question of whether they will have their choice taken away from them, but of whether they will begin to have a choice.
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There is nothing in physics that allows for the production of a subjective observer. In a purely physical universe, consciousness would never arise. The notion that it does is a category error. Not a simple error, like 2+2=5, but a category error, like 2+2=blue. You can do sums on integers till the sun goes nova and your answer will always be an integer, not a color.
"But muh materialism."
The base of materialism has always been a special pleading thing against the supernatural. "I have this rule that I just made up that says nothing outside space/time/matter can influence it (in most variants because nothing outside it existed)." Materialism is dead. Big bang cosmology killed it.
No explaination can be offered for why something exists rather than nothing. Yet, this should not give us pause because SOMETHING DOES EXIST. If in the link of causality there was ever a node where NOTHING EXISTED, then of course, nothing would exist forever thereafter. Anything which BEGINS to exist must be caused by something else. It follows that any account of origin must either have an infinite regression, or a closed loop, or a ground of being.
Most theists claimed that God was outside of time, and ground of being. The Atheists of the Victorian era countered Matter was eternally pre-existant, thus did not begin, thus required no agent of origin. They claimed Matter was Ground of Being.
But starting in 1924, Edwin Hubble painstakingly developed a series of distance indicators to galaxies. This allowed him to estimate distances to galaxies whose redshifts had already been measured, mostly by Slipher. In 1929 Hubble discovered a correlation between distance and recession velocity—now known as Hubble's law. Lemaître had already shown that this was expected, given the cosmological principle. In the 1920s and 1930s almost every major cosmologist preferred an eternal steady state universe, and several complained that the beginning of time implied by the Big Bang imported religious concepts into physics; this objection was later repeated by supporters of the competing steady state theory. The rub is that Big Bang means that matter had a beginning, and thus cannot be ground of being. This undercuts the logical underpinnings of atheism/materialism.
Materialist dogma is that nothing outside space/time/matter can exist or affect it. Big bang cosmology proves that something outside it does exist and did affect it. Materialism was never compatible with consciousness. Now it is not compatible with known cosmology. Materialism is dead.
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That sort of thing happens all the time and nobody tries to stop it by force. What you are describing is essentially what much of modern media and art does. Christians get slandered in movies all the time. When a Christian character is depicted in a movie he is either the villain or a dupe. I am sure the same thing happens in other kinds of movies as well, but I am an action movie fan. In Ultraviolet, the villainous organization was represented as a sort of Church, with Christian iconography. In Equilibrium, the same. In Priest, a Catholic Church analog is the organization that fights the vampires, but the high Church official is a villain. In the latest Resident Evil l film the head villain and his clones quote Christian scripture and lead cultists in evil mayhem.
In the area of "fine art" Andrfes Serrano got a federal arts grant for "Piss Christ", a photograph of a crucifix in a jar of his own urine, and the Robert Maplethorpe exibit, also marked for a federal arts grant, was a collection of homosexual erotica photographs. Unlike the publisher of the Charlie Hebdo cartoon, who was murdered for publishing a Muhammad cartoon, Maplethorpe and Serrano are alive and well.
I can't tell you about TV, I don't watch TV.
As for patriotism, it receives much the same treatment. US flag burning is popular and essentially encouraged in the nations prominent universities. Patriots and soldiers are depicted as monsters in an unending supply of well funded and lavishly produced and promoted movies that nobody watches, but which keep getting made, while the fact that the few movies that depict our servicemen positively actually sell tickets is ignored.
Except for the Muhammad part (for obvious reasons) your "wild hypothetical" essentially happens every day, and has elicited no calls for censorship. There has been some support for eliminating the National Endowment for the Arts that keeps funding folks like Serrano and Maplethorpe, but that is not censorship. So, your hypothetical scenario, informed by your prejudices, has been amply proven wrong by experiment.
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@pizzafrenzyman
"the moon is flat. this is why our view of the moon never changes"
When an observer on Newfoundland sees the Moon in his southern sky and an observer on the equator sees the Moon above him and an observer on Tierra del Fuego sees the Moon in the North the flat earther explanation is parallax, that the moon is a short distance above the equator, closer to the equator than the equator is to Newfoundland or Tierrra del Fuego. This does not work, no matter what shape you imagine the Moon is. If the Moon is flat, and appears as a circular disk from the equator, then it will look like a flattened elipse from Newfoundland or Tierra del Fuego. If it is a sphere then the northern and southern observers would see different faces of it because they are viewing it from almost the opposite direction from one another. Also, because of the widely differing distances, they would all see it at a different apparent size, which is not what we DO see.
In fact observers from all 3 places see the SAME FACE of the Moon, in the same shape and the same size. This is ONLY explicable on the assumption that the Moon is distant, and the Earth curved. There is no possible flat earth explanation for this. The ancient Greeks knew that the Earth was round, and had used parallax and surveying methods to accurately calculate the distance between the Earth and the Moon.
In a lunar eclipse, the shadow of the Earth backlit by the Sun moves across the Moon. When viewing an eclipse, regardless of where in your sky you see the Moon, the shadow of the Earth that crosses the Moon is circular. What shape casts a circular shadow, in any direction? Only a sphere.
The flat earther "map" Shows a north pole, and south diverges in every direction from it. This does not explain why the north pole star, Polaris, and the northern constellations fall below the horizon as one passes into the southern hemisphere, and new constellations come into view. One of these is the "Southern Cross", four stars in such a place that if you mentally "draw" a cross between the opposite stars the intersection of the lines is due south. This serves the southern hemisphere as a south "pole star" in the same way as Polaris serves the northern hemisphere as the north pole star. This is not possible on the flat earth map. The southern cross has to be south of South America and south of Australia. But on the flat earth map south of South America is nearly the opposite direction from south of Australia. On the global assumption, all these observations make sense if the Southern Cross is above the South Pole. On flat earth assumptions, where is the southern cross?
A "globe hoax" would require a simultaneous unbroken conspiracy of all the cartographers, pilots, astronauts, astronomers, navigators, surveyors, sailors, physicists, cosmologists, historians and many more that have ever lived since hundreds of years BC. Any conspiracy theory that asserts that ALL THE EYEWITNESSES ARE LYING is BUNK!
Scott Fischer
"Cable Yaj this [GPS] is done by phone masts not satellite. "
There are no phone masts in the ocean.
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@bobcuddy853 That wouldn't explain how they all use the same quirky phrases. People who arrive at the same conclusions independently don't SOUND LIKE they've been to the same briefing. And the thing about what they say in unison is that if you don't forget what they said before you find out that the party line was false. The MSM has gotten every major story from the Tet Offensive to Benghazi not only wrong but diametrically wrong. Just since 2000:
1. (CBS 60 Minutes) Dan Rather Publicizes Forged Memos About George W. Bush’s National Guard Duty
2. (Huffington Post, New York Times, FiveThirtyEight, et al.) Hillary Has a 98% Chance of Winning The Election
3. (Salon, CNN, NBC News, MSNBC, CBS News, et al.) Donald Trump Requests Security Clearance for His Children
4. (ABC News) In 2009, ABC News Blatantly Lied About The 1 Million Protesters in Attendance, Reports 60,000
This is a bad one because it was so brazenly false. Glenn Beck’s 9-12 March on Washington DC brought in over a million Tea Party protesters to call for lower taxes and less federal spending.
Clear pictures of the crowds from the tops of Washington DC buildings can be cross-referenced with the USA Today/National Park Service schematic for estimating the turnout at President Obama’s inauguration in January earlier that year. The turnout was undeniably one million plus.
5. (CBS News) 1 Million Disenfranchised Black Voters in The 2000 Election
Back then, activists claimed that dogs and hoses were used to keep black voters from the polls. Claims that thousands of blacks were disenfranchised, harassed, and intimidated from voting ran rampant. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights conducted a six-month investigation of the charges and found absolutely no evidence of systematic disenfranchisement of black voters. The civil-rights division of the Department of Justice also found no credible evidence that any Floridians were intentionally denied the right to vote.
6. (CNN, CBS News, NBC, et al.) TV Networks Call Critical Toss-Up Race in Florida for Al Gore Too Early
In a historically very tight toss-up race in a state with critical electoral votes, the mainstream media’s television networks called Florida too soon for Al Gore in an “embarrassment of major proportions.” Dan Rather was so bold as to make it a guarantee, “If we say somebody’s carried the state, you can take that to the bank. Book it!”
The networks made the call just before 8pm Eastern and were forced to retract their call. By 1:30am the Sunshine State was still too close to call. The earlier pronouncement may have had the effect of chilling votes on either or both sides. The state was eventually carried by George W. Bush.
7. (ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, NBC, and MSNBC) TV Networks Falsely Claim The Polls In Florida Are Closed
8. (Washington Post, Miami Herald, Mic, et al.) Sources Falsely Claim Orlando Shooter Used an AR-15 Rifle
9. (Daily Mail) UK Newspaper Falsely Claims Donald Trump’s wife, Melania, Worked as an Escort
10. (New York Times) A National Desk Columnist for The New York Times Made A Career There Out of Faking News
Jayson Blair
11. (Rolling Stone) A Completely Fabricated Story of Campus Rape Is Published In A Catastrophic Failure of Editorial Process
12. (Reuters) Photographer Doctors a Photo of Smoke at The Site of an Israeli Airstrike
In 2006, Reuters published photos of an Israeli airstrike in a suburban neighborhood of Beirut. A skeptical American blogger criticized the photo: “This Reuters photograph shows blatant evidence of manipulation. Notice the repeating patterns in the smoke; this is almost certainly caused by using the Photoshop ‘clone’ tool to add more smoke to the image.”
13. (The Huffington Post, The Independent, International Business Times et al.) Media Falsely Reports Hit and Run in Brussels as Right-Wing Hate Crime
The Huffington Post’s headline was later amended, but the URL still contains the original report of a “far right activist” at work. The Independent also corrected the narrative-driven, knee jerk reporting still evident in their article’s URL. So too, the International Business Times.
As the Independent reports in a correction at the bottom of their article, the hit and run driver was a young Muslim local named Mohamed.
14. (The Guardian) UK Newspaper Publishes Chain Email Hoax Claiming President Bush Has The Lowest IQ of Any President
15. In 2001 after the election of President George W. Bush, a hoax email began circulating claiming that a study of presidential IQs by the Lovenstein Institute of Scranton, Pennsylvania found that George W. Bush had an IQ of 91, the lowest of any US president, while outgoing President Bill Clinton had the highest at 182.
The study was a fabrication and the Lovenstein Institute doesn’t even exist. Neither do the sociologists quoted in the email. But in a stunning display of the journalistic standards at The Guardian, the fairly obvious chain email hoax was published as news! The paper retracted the story when the Associated Press pointed out their error.
16. (Washington Post) Pulitzer Prize Awarded To Journalist for Fake Story About an 8 Year Old Heroin Addict
In 1980, as the War on Drugs started by President Richard Nixon raged on, a Washington Post journalist named Janet Cooke published a story entitled, “Jimmy’s World,” about an 8 year old heroin addict.
17. (NBC) Nightly News Anchor Brian Williams Lied About an Iraq War Helicopter Incident
In 2003 Dateline NBC headlined a story, “Target Iraq: Helicopter NBC’s Brian Williams Was Riding In Comes Under Fire.” In a 2007 retelling of the story, Williams said, “I looked down the tube of an RPG that had been fired at us, and it hit the chopper in front of us.” By 2013, Williams said, the helicopter he was in had been “hit … and landed very quickly.”
In February of 2015, Williams had to recant the story after criticism from the Chinook crew who said the helicopter Williams was riding in was not hit by an RPG and that he could not have seen the one that was hit ahead of the one he was riding in because it was a half hour ahead of his flight.
Further scrutiny prompted by this revelation found that Williams had told inconsistent stories about a man committing suicide in the New Orleans Super Dome during Katrina, falsely claimed he was at the Brandenburg Gate the night the Berlin Wall came down, and lied about flying into Baghdad with SEAL Team Six.
18. (The Associated Press, Boston Globe, CNN, Fox News) FBI Criticizes Media for False Reports Regarding The Boston Marathon Bombers
In the aftermath of the Boston Marathon Bombings in 2013, with the perpetrators still at large, several news sources falsely reported that an arrest had been made.
19. (The Washington Post, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, CBS, et al.) Media Spreads Inflammatory Fake News Story About a Police Shooting in Ferguson, MO
In 2014, when a Ferguson, Missouri Police Officer confronted a suspect who matched the description of an assault and robbery that had just taken place at a convenient store, the young man, 18 year old Michael Brown, fought with the Police Officer, Darren Wilson, struggling to wrest his gun away. When Wilson pursued him on foot, Brown turned and charged at him, and Wilson fired several shots into the front of Brown’s body, killing him.
This was a very delicate tragedy with strong racial overtones, and in a rush to support a racially-charged, inflammatory media narrative, journalists enthusiastically spread a fake news story: that Michael Brown had his hands up and yelled “Don’t shoot!” at the time Wilson fatally discharged his firearm. It turned out to be false. Upon investigation by the Federal Justice Department, eyewitnesses changed their stories or admitted they didn’t see the shooting take place.
The eager embrace of this narrative by the media had real world consequences, stoking tensions and anger in Ferguson and leading to looting of local businesses and protests that turned violent. The shooting happened in August 2014. By March 2015, MSNBC anchor and Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart finally offered a mea culpa with a column entitled, “‘Hands Up, Don’t Shoot’ Was Based on a Lie.”
20. (The Daily Mirror) Piers Morgan Fired From UK Newspaper for Hoaxing Photos of Iraqi Prisoner Abuse
21. The initial false narrative involving the Covington HS youth, which was reported without due diligence, and, in all too many cases, not properly corrected or even corrected at all.
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@hermanhoppe3773 "Magic Johnsons HIV episode."
Yes, MJ tested positive for AIDS, and anybody that didn't want to play with him in the Olympics and get sweated on was some sort of monster, along with everybody that proposed anything like a quarantine (even a sexual one) or "social distancing" in response to a disease that AT THAT TIME had a near 100% death rate (reduced not by a vaccine, but by palliatives, which we're banned for mentioning in the context of Covid). Non of this is meant to rag on Magic (it's impossible to dislike Magic Johnson), but to illustrate that the response to both these epidemics was predicated on politics. In AIDS, the main victim group was a politically favored group, and not enough people were affected to make for much of a power grab. Covid was less discriminate, so the power grab was the only dynamic. So much for "following the experts", because it is obviously the case that the fact that the political radicals control the "experts" paychecks IS relevant, after all.
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Yeah, the pieces are all in place, the ubiquitous surveillance, the Newspeak, the censorship, "refs nonpersons", "mutability of the past", TVs that watch you, the "two minutes hate" at our workplaces (only longer), the Big Lie gaslighting: ‘War Is Peace. Freedom Is Slavery. Ignorance Is Strength.’
But they haven't nailed us down yet. In the final stage, they can't depend on deception alone. One can't ultimately be a total despot in secret. They aren't really trying to fool us anymore. They are trying to DEMORALIZE us. They want a situation where all of us betray everybody else. Totalitarianism requires a state of affairs where almost everybody KNOWS they're being oppressed and lied to, but nobody dares SAY it.
Galadriel:
The Quest stands upon the edge of a knife. Stray but a little, and it will fail, to the ruin of all. Yet hope remains while the Company is true.
Aragorn:
By all that you hold dear on this good earth, I bid you stand, Men of the West!
Puddlegum:
"One word, Ma'am," he said, coming back from the fire; limping, because of the pain. "One word. All you've been saying is quite right, I shouldn't wonder. I'm a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won't deny any of what you said. But there's one thing more to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things – trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that's a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We're just babies making up a game, if you're right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That's why I'm going to stand by the play-world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we're leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that's a small loss if the world's as dull a place as you say."
G, K. Chesterton -
“Truths turn into dogmas the instant that they are disputed. Thus every man who utters a doubt defines a religion. And the skepticism of our time does not really destroy the beliefs, rather it creates them; gives them their limits and their plain and defiant shape. We who are Liberals once held Liberalism lightly as a truism. Now it has been disputed, and we hold it fiercely as a faith. We who believe in patriotism once thought patriotism to be reasonable, and thought little more about it. Now we know it to be unreasonable, and know it to be right. We who are Christians never knew the great philosophic common sense which inheres in that mystery until the anti-Christian writers pointed it out to us. The great march of mental destruction will go on. Everything will be denied. Everything will become a creed. It is a reasonable position to deny the stones in the street; it will be a religious dogma to assert them. It is a rational thesis that we are all in a dream; it will be a mystical sanity to say that we are all awake. Fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer. We shall be left defending, not only the incredible virtues and sanities of human life, but something more incredible still, this huge impossible universe which stares us in the face. We shall fight for visible prodigies as if they were invisible. We shall look on the impossible grass and the skies with a strange courage. We shall be of those who have seen and yet have believed.”
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If he does then the case falls apart. Protestantism created the modern libertarian west. We (Protestants) ended slavery; implemented religious freedom, political freedom, academic freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press FIRST, and thus caused the academic, scientific, technological, and material progress that followed; and most of the rest of the world hasn't caught up with it yet. John 8:32 "You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
You may claim that this all comes from the Tanakh, but if it had remained Jewish, it would not have impacted the world. We couldn't have done it without you, humanly speaking, but you never would have tried it without us.
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The British cracked Enigma.
About bombers vs ships. It was discovered early in the war that high altitude bombing by medium and heavy bombers was ineffective against ships which were underway and able to maneuver (this mode could still be used against ships at anchor). Moving ships had time to see the bombs coming and maneuver to generate a miss. Alas, this battle was part of the discovery process. Before the end of the war, new techniques for medium bombers for a half diving low level attack (which was the closest a medium bomber could get to dive bombing) proved more effective. No ship underway was sank during the war by a high level attack, so heavy bombers (which couldn't attack any other way) played no anti-surface ship roll. The bombers conducting the initial attack on the invasion fleet were B-25 Mitchell medium bombers, which later became effective against ships after the new bombing techniques were developed for it. Later in the battle, they played a role by persuading the strike fleet to rearm for land attack, which made them a sitting duck for the dive bombers (with fuel bowzers, bombs and half-fueled aircraft all over the Japanese decks).
Dive bombing is another story, both on land and at sea, it was already at the start of the war the WW2 form of "precision" bombing, practiced by smaller carrier based bombers, and some small land based bombers like the German Stuka, and was reasonably effective throughout the war, both in close air support of ground troops and against ships. This early in the war, the Americans had not yet found out that their torpedoes were faulty, which they later corrected.
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@christopherbertoli7322 "SpaceX is being run like every other private company: poorly, "
You are either utterly ignorant of the inherent characteristics of private companies compared to government agencies, or you are blowing smoke for partizan political purposes. There is NO effective pressure on government agencies to be efficient, they are in effect rewarded for spending money. Private companies must be efficient or die. The universal results of each mode of operation match this difference. If you don't know this, you don't know anything. If you are looking for an exception to this, look to the "corporate welfare" beneficiaries like the most powerful defense contractors and ULA, which get "cost plus" contracts. Unlike ULA, SpaceX got a relative pittance of R & D money, but his government contracts don't pay up until he delivers. ULA gets paid continuously for stretching out programs, and the gravy train ENDS when they deliver. That's why the Shuttle took so long to develop and there has been no manned replacement, indeed no new vehicle since the 1980s from ULA, despite multiple major contracts. ULA is being payed megabucks to dither, SpaceX is being paid to get the job done, no "cost plus" nonsense. When private companies bid on NASA contracts with no "cost plus" provisions, we will begin to see some cost effectiveness on the vehicle production side. But NASA is still a government agency and will always waste a goodly portion of their budget on red tape and administrative nonsense. Diligence in managing government agencies is vitally important and long overdue, but will always be an incomplete uphill battle. Cutting costs in a government agency is like herding cats (contrary to the nature of cats), but still needs to be continuously attempted.
As for comparing the Challenger accident with the Dragon crash, you're trying to compare an operational failure with multiple fatalities FAVORABLY to a failure in an unmanned test flight. This makes no sense. Any failure is suboptimal, but compared with operational failures, a test failure is pretty much what tests are for. Far better to have your failures in the test program so you can fix them before you are carrying a valuable payload.
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Musk censors ILLEGAL posts (calling for violence, facilitating or advocating crimes including child abuse) and maybe racist or race supremacist posts. He DOES NOT censor his political opponents, as is obvious if you read anything on X. He is not responding emotionally, as you imply, he is adhering to the principle he bought Twitter to defend: freedom of expression. The Brazilian government has demanded that X censor and dox their political opposition. Despots always make this sort of abuse "legal", but that doesn't make it right. If the law of the land trumps human rights, then we need to apologize to the Nuremberg defendants. The executors of the Final Solution were obeying local law. History has harshly judged those who appeased tyrannous regimes, and rightly so. The side that tries to settle a dispute of fact by the use of force is the obscurantist side, every time. This is how you know you are evil.
All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. Musk is consistent in all countries. A champion of the people's rights, voice, and power.
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@danielvincent1153
Your original claim was that Peterson was saying the same thing that Cortez was, that it is OK to play fast and loose with facts in a good cause. Your Peterson quotes don't equate to that. He has been lauding the metaphorical lessons learned from what he regards as the foundational myths of western society. That's not the same as advocating saying something is literally true when it is literally not. What was expressed by Nietzche is presumably what he said before that sentence.
Nietzche did say:
To renounce belief in one's ego, to deny one's own "reality" -- what a triumph! not merely over the senses, over appearance, but a much higher kind of triumph, a violation and cruelty against reason -- a voluptuous pleasure that reaches its height when the ascetic self-contempt and self-mockery of reason declares: "there is a realm of truth and being, but reason is excluded from it!"
But precisely because we seek knowledge, let us not be ungrateful to such resolute reversals of accustomed perspectives and valuations with which the spirit has, with apparent mischievousness and futility, raged against itself for so long: to see differently in this way for once, to want to see differently, is no small discipline and preparation for its future "objectivity" -- the latter understood not as "contemplation without interest" (which is a nonsensical absurdity), but as the ability to control one's Pro and Con and to dispose of them, so that one knows how to employ a variety of perspectives and affective interpretations in the service of knowledge.
Henceforth, my dear philosophers, let us be on guard against the dangerous old conceptual fiction that posited a "pure, will-less, painless, timeless knowing subject"; let us guard against the snares of such contradictory concepts as "pure reason," absolute spirituality," "knowledge in itself": these always demand that we should think of an eye that is completely unthinkable, an eye turned in no particular direction, in which the active and interpreting forces, through which alone seeing becomes seeing something, are supposed to be lacking; these always demand of the eye an absurdity and a nonsense. There is only a perspective seeing, only a perspective "knowing"; and the more affects we allow to speak about one thing, the more eyes, different eyes, we can use to observe one thing, the more complete will our "concept" of this thing, our "objectivity," be. But to eliminate the will altogether, to suspend each and every affect, supposing we were capable of this -- what would that mean but to castrate the intellect?
from Nietzsche's The Genealogy of Morals, s III.12, Walter Kaufmann transl.
Metaphysical world.-- It is true, there could be a metaphysical world; the absolute possibility of it is hardly to be disputed. We behold all things through the human head and cannot cut off this head; while the question nonetheless remains what of the world would still be there if one had cut it off.
from Nietzsche's Human, All Too Human, s.9, R.J. Hollingdale transl.
We have arranged for ourselves a world in which we can live - by positing bodies, lines, planes, causes and effects, motion and rest, form and content; without these articles of faith nobody could now endure life. But that does not prove them. Life is no argument. The conditions of life might include error.
from Nietzsche's The Gay Science, s.121, Walter Kaufmann transl..
"So I would say" that is clearly NOT attributing the following to N, as you seem to imply by omitting the context. He is expressing his own idea.
"The ethical pursuit supercedes the scientific pursuit with regards to truth claims" That's meaningless on materialistic terms, because the ethical is meaningless on materialistic terms, but why do you assume he is a materialist? If the ethical is valid, that is if the qualifying claims of morality to objectivity, universality, and transcendence are true then BY DEFINITION it is the judge of all things. What is there IN SCIENCE that would keep a scientist from doing evil? And if the ethical is invalid, on what basis do you condemn liars, as you seemed ready enough to do?
"There are truths other than the literal, and perhaps even more truthful than the literal truths"
This is the whole basis of literary fiction, fable, and metaphor. That a lesson can be taken from a story (a moral or a factual lesson) when we indulge in our "willing suspension of disbelief" (to use Coleridge's phrase) as if from personal experience - without our having to make the mistake, or hazard the experience. Peterson finds in some stories the distilled wisdom of the ages because the idea conveyed by them is helpful.
You asked earlier if I had watched any of Petersons debates with Harris, I did watch part of them, it was painful to watch because they were speaking to cross purposes. Harris was implying that Peterson was being disingenuous for contradicting materialism. If you have listened to the first Rubin conversation with Peterson and Ben Shapiro, it should be obvious that Peterson is NOT a materialist. If I had to guess, and since Peterson does not come out and say I suppose that he is an agnostic. What Peterson was saying to Harris may well be meaningless on Harris' assumptions, but Peterson does not share those assumptions.
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If you think that conservative content is the path to easy money, you haven't the merest clue about the media landscape. Every conservative spokesman goes into the field knowing he could make many times more hawking the other side. The side underwritten by oodles of well connected billionaire donors. The side that never has to worry about demonitization, cancellation, censorship or subsidized industrial strength slander, harassing litigation, organized subsidized pre-pardoned harassment and outright naked violence, and political prosecution from a lockstep monolithic power bloc of the bureaucratic state, legacy and state sponsored media, the electronic gatekeepers, their shady cynical oligarchs, and their many dupes and henchmen.
It just irks the hell out of you that we work-stained Bob Cratchits in our deplorable masses can glean a ha'pence here, a tu'pence there and have the unmitigated gall to pool our penury and prayers; our blood, sweat, tears, and toil; our individually feeble voices and indomitable goodwill to collectively support a few brave and talented men and women to publish some genteel and diffident criticism against the most powerful corrupt political machine the world has known. "It's not FAIR", sobs the crybully in agony as he lays on the whip. "There oughta be a LAW!!" It never occurred to anyone in the history of mankind to speak the truth to power FOR MONEY, for good and sufficient reason. It's bad for business.
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@str.77 Sorry, you are both wrong. The House Committee might have made some mistakes, but McCarthy was a senator and didn't serve on House commitees. Every person HE targeted was an active handled agent of Soviet espionage. The Verona Soviet diplomatic code had been broken by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI who passed the classified info to McCarthy, so McCarthy knew who the moles were in the Federal Government before he started investigating them, he just had to get evidence that could be introduced in open court, which he did. Obviously, this could not be revealed at the time, but it has since been declassified.
Alger Hiss and all the others save one were unanimously found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of espionage by a jury of 12 of their peers. I know that Hiss, at least, had an agent traded for him and lived out his days in the Soviet Union. The one that was not convicted got off by playing to existing stereotypes, acting like a "dumb negro" in the hearings, and the Democrats played along by laughing uproariously at the minstrel show. That's not wrong, and that's not luck.
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@jamesbarber4765 "we are supposed to believe that everyone, that has a problem with Jews, is because they are smart business people/men?"
Jews because they're Jews? Sure. It makes more sense than the notion that an ethnicity is a conspiracy.
"There are a lot of smart Nigerians, Chinese, East Indian, Russians, and a whole plethora of other groups that are wealthy and smart business people and everyone doesn't hate them."
Not everybody hates the Jews, either. And many hate some or all of the groups above. In his book he documented the violence and targeted crime against all the above groups. So it is primarily a case of similarity, not contrast.
"So it's got to be deeper than that."
It is. Satan is the prince of this world. Satan hates the Jews, and would love to destroy them to "prevent" the fulfillment of future prophesies. Satan teaches his children to hate them, too.
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@harrylee7148 There is nothing remotely racist about anything TC has ever said. You know this. Everybody knows this. It is a feeble attempt at Bulverism and it's beginning to lose its force as any fallacy does with overuse. You are unable to oppose your opponents with rational arguments so you attribute to your opponents irrational or ignoble motives for their views to try to excuse yourself and your readers from engaging his arguments, for dismissing them a priori . And you have the audacity to invoke the name of God in your slander.
Quote from Bulverism by C. S. Lewis:
You must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong. The modern method is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became so silly.
In the course of the last fifteen years I have found this vice so common that I have had to invent a name for it. I call it "Bulverism". Some day I am going to write the biography of its imaginary inventor, Ezekiel Bulver, whose destiny was determined at the age of five when he heard his mother say to his father — who had been maintaining that two sides of a triangle were together greater than a third — "Oh you say that because you are a man." "At that moment", E. Bulver assures us, "there flashed across my opening mind the great truth that refutation is no necessary part of argument. Assume that your opponent is wrong, and explain his error, and the world will be at your feet. Attempt to prove that he is wrong or (worse still) try to find out whether he is wrong or right, and the natural dynamism of our age will thrust you to the wall." That is how Bulver became one of the makers of the Twentieth Century.
Suppose I think, after doing my accounts, that I have a large balance at the bank. And suppose you want to find out whether this belief of mine is "wishful thinking." You can never come to any conclusion by examining my psychological condition. Your only chance of finding out is to sit down and work through the sum yourself. When you have checked my figures, then, and then only, will you know whether I have that balance or not. If you find my arithmetic correct, then no amount of vapouring about my psychological condition can be anything but a waste of time. If you find my arithmetic wrong, then it may be relevant to explain psychologically how I came to be so bad at my arithmetic, and the doctrine of the concealed wish will become relevant — but only after you have yourself done the sum and discovered me to be wrong on purely arithmetical grounds. It is the same with all thinking and all systems of thought. If you try to find out which are tainted by speculating about the wishes of the thinkers, you are merely making a fool of yourself. You must first find out on purely logical grounds which of them do, in fact, break down as arguments. Afterwards, if you like, go on and discover the psychological causes of the error.
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RCC and Islam get a FEW converts, but mostly spread by natural increase. Most evangelism is done by evangelicals. And Protestantism created the modern libertarian west. We (Protestants) ended slavery; implemented religious freedom, political freedom, academic freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press FIRST, and thus caused the academic, scientific, technological, and material progress that followed; and most of the rest of the world hasn't caught up with it yet. John 8:32 "You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” The RCC legacy hinders apologetics and evangelism, because the first thing we are called on to do is DEFEND the inquisition and all that burning at the stake, even though it was OUR spiritual ancestors UNDER the screws and not TURNING them.
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@ItJuM856 They are obsolete as ship to ship surface combatants due the the range of missiles. (supposedly, but what if everybody's antimissile defenses work great and you run out of missiles? Missiles are bulky and expensive and you can't carry as many. I suppose that is the reasoning behind the Kirov, or maybe the gun is just for shore bombardment.)
But every major conflict after we mothballed them after WW2, the US brought one or two back into commission for shore bombardment, which they could do much faster and oodles cheaper than missiles bombarding targets up to 35 km distant (at the maximum rated elevation of 30 degrees, I suppose if you could trim the ship to heel over the other way you could get a bit more range, optimum elevation for range is 45 degrees) in support of amphibious operations, or other operations near the coast. Our last use of battleships was in Operation Desert Storm, firing Tomahawk missiles in the air war and blasting away at coastal defenses with the 16 inch guns as a diversion in the ground war. Ours have been permanently decommissioned now, and the Marines will miss them, because for that task, nothing in the modern inventory is better or more cost effective for sustained operational fire support.
Rail guns will have even greater range than guns and the projectiles will be cheaper than missiles. If some of the projectiles could have terminal guidance, that would be deadly in a surface engagement. Projectiles having an ability to maneuver aerodynamically could also extend the range at the cost of kinetic power on target. (Due to the massive acceleration and electromagnetic flux at firing, it may be hard to make electronics and moving parts work on these projectiles.) I suppose if the procurement establishment has their heads screwed on straight, they could have cheaper projectile options than the max range tungsten darts as well as fragmentation options. Rail guns, if properly implemented, have the potential to meet or exceed the cost-effectiveness of big guns while increasing the range and versatility of surface fire, both against ships and against land targets. Whether that potential can or will be realized in practical terms remains to be seen.
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@derKosmoprolet369 "I'm afraid you don't understand the concept of a civilised society at all ......the concept to protect the 'weak ' poor and vulnerable ones against the mighty rich.....if a government is refusing this service to his citizens you don't have a civilised society !"
If your government has the power to protect you from ideas, it is oppressive. A common fallacy of utopian ideologues is that human nature is inherently good, but is being held back by some flaw in the social contract. In fact, the same flawed, imperfect, selfish, stupid nature that infests the lord, or the "capitalist", infests the revolutionary. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The "capitalist" AS SUCH, can only hire or bribe. An unchecked authoritarian government can do that (with other people's money), plus arrest, torture, and kill you or your family. It is incoherent to fear the former and not fear the latter. No "angel" is available to bear this power benignly. The power MUST NOT BE ALLOWED TO EXIST.
Your "concept of a civilized society" has been played out in history all too often. Leftist revel in the equivocation of taking common words which have earned a positive or negative connotation, and stuffing a proprietary syntactical load into them. What you're choosing to CALL "civilized" is oppression and oppression is barbaric.
"you seem really keen to have ( and use))the right to spread lies"
Yes, from the prohibition of a central "truth authority", the practical right to lie follows. However, you merely beg the question of whether any of the things you object to having the people hear is, in fact, a lie. You have named no lies.
"and calling out for illegal activities"
None of the persons whose censorship you demand have called for illegal activities. (But if they don't want me censoring them I can conclude that they must be up to any sort of "no good" that I can imagine, right?) You certainly are willing to take advantage of the "right to lie" yourself.
"I listen to people with different opinions "
But you're not willing to extend this "privilege" to others.
"btw, why get all my comments get cancelled (by YT or GOOGLE? -- US companies!) as soon I mention certain names like 'snow den ' or -as ange?) ....freedom of speech ( a la american)?"
Because YT and Google agree with you about the prudential limitation of free speech. I have grounds to complain about this. You do not. Enjoy the application of your "principles" upon yourself.
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@AlekseyMaksimovichPeshkov 60 minutes is a left wing show and editing interviews to distort the context is their shtick. Look at how they film interviews. No wide shot to show the interviewer and interviewed. Alternating closeups between them and a generic backdrop behind the interviewer. This is so they can edit the interview to create false impressions. To place answers in the context of DIFFERENT QUESTIONS, and edit OUT key background information, they can even film a new "question" after the fact in front of their generic background to create a false context for the "answer". Usually, 60 Minutes does this to do a hit job on the interviewed, but it can be worked the other way. That is the whole basis of the show. They have been doing this since it first aired in 1968.
The formerly mainstream media have gotten every major story since the Tet Offensive not only wrong, but the diametric opposite of the truth. Here are some recent howlers:
1. (CBS 60 Minutes) Dan Rather Publicizes Fake Memos About George W. Bush’s National Guard Duty
2. (Huffington Post, New York Times, FiveThirtyEight, et al.) Hillary Has a 98% Chance of Winning The Election
3. (Salon, CNN, NBC News, MSNBC, CBS News, et al.) Donald Trump Requests Security Clearance for His Children
4. (ABC News) In 2009, ABC News Blatantly Lied About The 1 Million Protesters in Attendance, Reports 60,000
This is a bad one because it was so brazenly false. Glenn Beck’s 9-12 March on Washington DC brought in over a million Tea Party protesters to call for lower taxes and less federal spending.
Clear pictures of the crowds from the tops of Washington DC buildings can be cross-referenced with the USA Today/National Park Service schematic for estimating the turnout at President Obama’s inauguration in January earlier that year. The turnout was undeniably one million plus.
5. (CBS News) 1 Million Disenfranchised Black Voters in The 2000 Election
Back then, activists claimed that dogs and hoses were used to keep black voters from the polls. Claims that thousands of blacks were disenfranchised, harassed, and intimidated from voting ran rampant. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights conducted a six-month investigation of the charges and found absolutely no evidence of systematic disenfranchisement of black voters. The civil-rights division of the Department of Justice also found no credible evidence that any Floridians were intentionally denied the right to vote.
6. (CNN, CBS News, NBC, et al.) TV Networks Call Critical Toss-Up Race in Florida for Al Gore Too Early
In a historically very tight toss-up race in a state with critical electoral votes, the mainstream media’s television networks called Florida too soon for Al Gore in an “embarrassment of major proportions.” Dan Rather was so bold as to make it a guarantee, “If we say somebody’s carried the state, you can take that to the bank. Book it!”
The networks made the call just before 8pm Eastern and were forced to retract their call. By 1:30am the Sunshine State was still too close to call. The earlier pronouncement may have had the effect of chilling votes on either or both sides. The state was eventually carried by George W. Bush.
7. (ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, NBC, and MSNBC) TV Networks Falsely Claim The Polls In Florida Are Closed
8. (Washington Post, Miami Herald, Mic, et al.) Sources Falsely Claim Orlando Shooter Used an AR-15 Rifle
9. (Daily Mail) UK Newspaper Falsely Claims Donald Trump’s wife, Melania, Worked as an Escort
10. (New York Times) A National Desk Columnist for The New York Times Made A Career There Out of Faking News
Jayson Blair
11. (Rolling Stone) A Completely Fabricated Story of Campus Rape Is Published In A Catastrophic Failure of Editorial Process
12. (Reuters) Photographer Doctors a Photo of Smoke at The Site of an Israeli Airstrike
In 2006, Reuters published photos of an Israeli airstrike in a suburban neighborhood of Beirut. A skeptical American blogger criticized the photo: “This Reuters photograph shows blatant evidence of manipulation. Notice the repeating patterns in the smoke; this is almost certainly caused by using the Photoshop ‘clone’ tool to add more smoke to the image.”
13. (The Huffington Post, The Independent, International Business Times et al.) Media Falsely Reports Hit and Run in Brussels as Right-Wing Hate Crime
The Huffington Post’s headline was later amended, but the URL still contains the original report of a “far right activist” at work. The Independent also corrected the narrative-driven, knee jerk reporting still evident in their article’s URL. So too, the International Business Times.
As the Independent reports in a correction at the bottom of their article, the hit and run driver was a young Muslim local named Mohamed.
14. (The Guardian) UK Newspaper Publishes Chain Email Hoax Claiming President Bush Has The Lowest IQ of Any President
15. In 2001 after the election of President George W. Bush, a hoax email began circulating claiming that a study of presidential IQs by the Lovenstein Institute of Scranton, Pennsylvania found that George W. Bush had an IQ of 91, the lowest of any US president, while outgoing President Bill Clinton had the highest at 182.
The study was a fabrication and the Lovenstein Institute doesn’t even exist. Neither do the sociologists quoted in the email. But in a stunning display of the journalistic standards at The Guardian, the fairly obvious chain email hoax was published as news! The paper retracted the story when the Associated Press pointed out their error.
16. (Washington Post) Pulitzer Prize Awarded To Journalist for Fake Story About an 8 Year Old Heroin Addict
In 1980, as the War on Drugs started by President Richard Nixon raged on, a Washington Post journalist named Janet Cooke published a story entitled, “Jimmy’s World,” about an 8 year old heroin addict.
17. (NBC) Nightly News Anchor Brian Williams Lied About an Iraq War Helicopter Incident
In 2003 Dateline NBC headlined a story, “Target Iraq: Helicopter NBC’s Brian Williams Was Riding In Comes Under Fire.” In a 2007 retelling of the story, Williams said, “I looked down the tube of an RPG that had been fired at us, and it hit the chopper in front of us.” By 2013, Williams said, the helicopter he was in had been “hit … and landed very quickly.”
In February of 2015, Williams had to recant the story after criticism from the Chinook crew who said the helicopter Williams was riding in was not hit by an RPG and that he could not have seen the one that was hit ahead of the one he was riding in because it was a half hour ahead of his flight.
Further scrutiny prompted by this revelation found that Williams had told inconsistent stories about a man committing suicide in the New Orleans Super Dome during Katrina, falsely claimed he was at the Brandenburg Gate the night the Berlin Wall came down, and lied about flying into Baghdad with SEAL Team Six.
18. (The Associated Press, Boston Globe, CNN, Fox News) FBI Criticizes Media for False Reports Regarding The Boston Marathon Bombers
In the aftermath of the Boston Marathon Bombings in 2013, with the perpetrators still at large, several news sources falsely reported that an arrest had been made.
19. (The Washington Post, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, CBS, et al.) Media Spreads Inflammatory Fake News Story About a Police Shooting in Ferguson, MO
In 2014, when a Ferguson, Missouri Police Officer confronted a suspect who matched the description of an assault and robbery that had just taken place at a convenient store, the young man, 18 year old Michael Brown, fought with the Police Officer, Darren Wilson, struggling to wrest his gun away. When Wilson pursued him on foot, Brown turned and charged at him, and Wilson fired several shots into the front of Brown’s body, killing him.
This was a very delicate tragedy with strong racial overtones, and in a rush to support a racially-charged, inflammatory media narrative, journalists enthusiastically spread a fake news story: that Michael Brown had his hands up and yelled “Don’t shoot!” at the time Wilson fatally discharged his firearm. It turned out to be false. Upon investigation by the Federal Justice Department, eyewitnesses changed their stories or admitted they didn’t see the shooting take place.
The eager embrace of this narrative by the media had real world consequences, stoking tensions and anger in Ferguson and leading to looting of local businesses and protests that turned violent. The shooting happened in August 2014. By March 2015, MSNBC anchor and Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart finally offered a mea culpa with a column entitled, “‘Hands Up, Don’t Shoot’ Was Based on a Lie.”
20. The initial false narrative involving the Covington HS youth, which was reported without due diligence, and, in all too many cases, not properly corrected or even corrected at all.
You're claiming that conservative media is inaccurate. Show what they got factually wrong. Your turn.
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@AlekseyMaksimovichPeshkov "right wing echo chamber"
It is impossible to form a "right wing echo chamber". Your take on matters is crammed down our throat. We get it on broadcast television, government subsidized public broadcast media, 3 out of 4 cable news networks, in primary, secondary, and higher education, in blurbs under our videos, in mandatory "struggle sessions" at our places of employment, in taxpayer funded advertisements. It is impossible for us not to be exposed to your point of view. The message is clear as a bell. Accept this or we will hurt you, enforced with slander, direct violence (Antifa, BLM), politically discriminatory hiring and firing, discriminatory regulatory harassment, lawfare, general harassment. There is nothing you could think of to say that we haven't heard before.
Obversely, it is trivially easy for you to avoid our point of view.
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@TonecrafteLuthiery
"I obviously can't speak to that in sweeping generalities"
Then proceeds to speak in sweeping generalities, misleading and false in several particulars.
FDR is broadly understood by economists to have parlayed what ought to have been a fairly ordinary recession into the nearly decade long Great Depression by very bad economic policies. Reagan turned simultaneous double digit inflation and double digit unemployment around in his first term.
The housing market debacle was a result of government policies forcing lending institutions to make bad loans, and the regulatory institution guaranteeing the loans. Bush criticized this policy, but Democrats in congress rushed to the defense of the director of the agency, characterizing Bush's criticism of the head and the policy as racist.
You forgot to say what was so wonderful about an open borders immigration policy.
"Though I won't pretend that the left is never targetted by fake news, in
the modern age, fake news is a phenomenon that predominantly effects
the American right."[sic]
That statement says almost the opposite of what you intended to say. The "target" of fake news is the person
or fact misrepresented by it. And the person or position effected by it is that target. You seemed to have told the truth by accident:
0. During the Vietnam war, Dan Rather passes off his collegue in soldier drag, a young Eric Sevaried, torching a hut in Vietnam as a candid news shot of a military operation.
1. (CBS 60 Minutes) Dan Rather Publicizes Fake Memos About George W. Bush’s National Guard Duty
2. (Huffington Post, New York Times, FiveThirtyEight, et al.) Hillary Has a 98% Chance of Winning The Election
3. (Salon, CNN, NBC News, MSNBC, CBS News, et al.) Donald Trump Requests Security Clearance for His Children
4. (ABC News) In 2009, ABC News Blatantly Lied About The 1 Million Protesters in Attendance, Reports 60,000
This is a bad one because it was so brazenly false. Glenn Beck’s 9-12 March on Washington DC brought in over a million Tea Party protesters to call for lower taxes and less federal spending.
Clear pictures of the crowds from the tops of Washington DC buildings can be cross-referenced with the USA Today/National Park Service schematic for estimating the turnout at President Obama’s inauguration in January earlier that year. The turnout was undeniably one million plus.
5. (CBS News) 1 Million Disenfranchised Black Voters in The 2000 Election
Back then, activists claimed that dogs and hoses were used to keep black voters from the polls. Claims that thousands of blacks were disenfranchised, harassed, and intimidated from voting ran rampant. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights conducted a six-month investigation of the charges and found absolutely no evidence of systematic disenfranchisement of black voters. The civil-rights division of the Department of Justice also found no credible evidence that any Floridians were intentionally denied the right to vote.
6. (CNN, CBS News, NBC, et al.) TV Networks Call Critical Toss-Up Race in Florida for Al Gore Too Early
In a historically very tight toss-up race in a state with critical electoral votes, the mainstream media’s television networks called Florida too soon for Al Gore in an “embarrassment of major proportions.” Dan Rather was so bold as to make it a guarantee, “If we say somebody’s carried the state, you can take that to the bank. Book it!”
The networks made the call just before 8pm Eastern and were forced to retract their call. By 1:30am the Sunshine State was still too close to call. The earlier pronouncement may have had the effect of chilling votes on either or both sides. The state was eventually carried by George W. Bush.
7. (ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, NBC, and MSNBC) TV Networks Falsely Claim The Polls In Florida Are Closed
8. (Washington Post, Miami Herald, Mic, et al.) Sources Falsely Claim Orlando Shooter Used an AR-15 Rifle
9. (Daily Mail) UK Newspaper Falsely Claims Donald Trump’s wife, Melania, Worked as an Escort
10. (New York Times) A National Desk Columnist for The New York Times Made A Career There Out of Faking News
Jayson Blair
11. (Rolling Stone) A Completely Fabricated Story of Campus Rape Is Published In A Catastrophic Failure of Editorial Process
12. (Reuters) Photographer Doctors a Photo of Smoke at The Site of an Israeli Airstrike
In 2006, Reuters published photos of an Israeli airstrike in a suburban neighborhood of Beirut. A skeptical American blogger criticized the photo: “This Reuters photograph shows blatant evidence of manipulation. Notice the repeating patterns in the smoke; this is almost certainly caused by using the Photoshop ‘clone’ tool to add more smoke to the image.”
13. (The Huffington Post, The Independent, International Business Times et al.) Media Falsely Reports Hit and Run in Brussels as Right-Wing Hate Crime
The Huffington Post’s headline was later amended, but the URL still contains the original report of a “far right activist” at work. The Independent also corrected the narrative-driven, knee jerk reporting still evident in their article’s URL. So too, the International Business Times.
As the Independent reports in a correction at the bottom of their article, the hit and run driver was a young Muslim local named Mohamed.
14. (The Guardian) UK Newspaper Publishes Chain Email Hoax Claiming President Bush Has The Lowest IQ of Any President
In 2001 after the election of President George W. Bush, a hoax email began circulating claiming that a study of presidential IQs by the Lovenstein Institute of Scranton, Pennsylvania found that George W. Bush had an IQ of 91, the lowest of any US president, while outgoing President Bill Clinton had the highest at 182.
The study was a fabrication and the Lovenstein Institute doesn’t even exist. Neither do the sociologists quoted in the email. But in a stunning display of the journalistic standards at The Guardian, the fairly obvious chain email hoax was published as news! The paper retracted the story when the Associated Press pointed out their error.
15. (Washington Post) Pulitzer Prize Awarded To Journalist for Fake Story About an 8 Year Old Heroin Addict
In 1980, as the War on Drugs started by President Richard Nixon raged on, a Washington Post journalist named Janet Cooke published a story entitled, “Jimmy’s World”
16. (NBC) Nightly News Anchor Brian Williams Lied About an Iraq War Helicopter Incident
In 2003 Dateline NBC headlined a story, “Target Iraq: Helicopter NBC’s Brian Williams Was Riding In Comes Under Fire.” In a 2007 retelling of the story, Williams said, “I looked down the tube of an RPG that had been fired at us, and it hit the chopper in front of us.” By 2013, Williams said, the helicopter he was in had been “hit … and landed very quickly.”
In February of 2015, Williams had to recant the story after criticism from the Chinook crew who said the helicopter Williams was riding in was not hit by an RPG and that he could not have seen the one that was hit ahead of the one he was riding in because it was a half hour ahead of his flight.
Further scrutiny prompted by this revelation found that Williams had told inconsistent stories about a man committing suicide in the New Orleans Super Dome during Katrina, falsely claimed he was at the Brandenburg Gate the night the Berlin Wall came down, and lied about flying into Baghdad with SEAL Team Six.
17. (The Associated Press, Boston Globe, CNN, Fox News) FBI Criticizes Media for False Reports Regarding The Boston Marathon Bombers
In the aftermath of the Boston Marathon Bombings in 2013, with the perpetrators still at large, several news sources falsely reported that an arrest had been made.
18. (The Washington Post, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, CBS, et al.) Media Spreads Inflammatory Fake News Story About a Police Shooting in Ferguson, MO
In 2014, when a Ferguson, Missouri Police Officer confronted a suspect who matched the description of an assault and robbery that had just taken place at a convenient store, the young man, 18 year old Michael Brown, fought with the Police Officer, Darren Wilson, struggling to wrest his gun away. When Wilson pursued him on foot, Brown turned and charged at him, and Wilson fired several shots into the front of Brown’s body, killing him.
This was a very delicate tragedy with strong racial overtones, and in a rush to support a racially-charged, inflammatory media narrative, journalists enthusiastically spread a fake news story: that Michael Brown had his hands up and yelled “Don’t shoot!” at the time Wilson fatally discharged his firearm. It turned out to be false. Upon investigation by the Federal Justice Department, eyewitnesses changed their stories or admitted they didn’t see the shooting take place.
The eager embrace of this narrative by the media had real world consequences, stoking tensions and anger in Ferguson and leading to looting of local businesses and protests that turned violent. The shooting happened in August 2014. By March 2015, MSNBC anchor and Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart finally offered a mea culpa with a column entitled, “‘Hands Up, Don’t Shoot’ Was Based on a Lie.”
19. (The Daily Mirror) Piers Morgan Fired From UK Newspaper for Hoaxing Photos of Iraqi Prisoner Abuse
20. It was a story that literally blew up in NBC’s face. On Nov. 17, Dateline NBC aired a report titled ”Waiting to Explode?” questioning the safety of some General Motors trucks. To try to ensure dramatic footage, the show’s producers allowed incendiary devices to be strapped to trucks for a crash-test demonstration. When GM discovered the setup, the carmaker sued NBC for defamation and temporarily removed its ads from the network’s news programs.
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In the past hundred years, science has not been kind to the notions of atheism and philosophical materialism, rather science has consistently and systematically undercut those claims. Whenever an aspect of science or archaeology can be brought to bear on the questions of origins, it has favored the creationist position.
Atheism became a moderately popular alternate view of origins in the Victorian Era. Science was just getting started, and since one of the aspects which science addressed was how things worked, a hope began to be fostered among those hostile to faith that explanations of science might serve to displace the revealed truth of the Bible.
It is common sense that anything that began must have been begun by something else. Jews and Christians had long taught that physics/space/time/matter (from now on we will just call it matter) was a created thing, created by God. God's origins did not have to be explained because he did not begin. He was either eternally pre-existant, or outside time altogether. In either case he was GROUND OF BEING, the prime mover or central fact of which all other facts were derivative.
No explanation can be offered for why something exists rather than nothing. Yet, this should not give us pause because SOMETHING DOES EXIST. If in the link of causality there was ever a node where NOTHING EXISTED, then of course, nothing would exist forever thereafter. Anything which begins to exist must be caused by something else. It follows that any account of origin must either have an infinite regression, or a closed loop, or a ground of being.
Christians claimed that God was outside of time, and ground of being. The Atheists of the Victorian era countered Matter was eternally pre-existant, thus did not begin, thus required no agent of origin. They claimed Matter was Ground of Being. In the area of the origin of species they resorted to the notion of evolution, as lame as "it just happened" might seem to first order as an explanation. At first, this was not presented as a theory of the origin of life itself, because it was not yet known that life was not eternally pre-existant. This body of belief will be referred to as "materialism" in the remainder of this treatise (not to be confused with a preoccupation with the trappings of wealth, which is "materialism" in a completely unrelated sense). Though atheism and materialism almost always go together, the terms have different definitions. Atheism is the belief that no God exists. Materialism is the belief that matter is ground of being; that everything that exists is physics/space/time/matter simply, or a derivative epiphenomenon of it. It is generally recognized that atheism, in the strictest sense, stands or falls on the strength of materialism. Evolution is generally understood to be necessary for atheism/materialism, but not the reverse.
But starting in 1924, Edwin Hubble painstakingly developed a series of distance indicators to galaxies. This allowed him to estimate distances to galaxies whose red shifts had already been measured, mostly by Slipher. In 1929 Hubble discovered a correlation between distance and recession velocity—now known as Hubble's law. Lemaître had already shown that this was expected, given the cosmological principle. In the 1920s and 1930s almost every major cosmologist preferred an eternal steady state universe, and several complained that the beginning of time implied by the Big Bang imported religious concepts into physics; this objection was later repeated by supporters of the competing steady state theory. The rub is that Big Bang means that matter had a beginning, and thus cannot be ground of being. This undercuts the logical underpinnings of atheism/materialism
<This exposition will continue in my next post>
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<continued from previous post>
Also, from:
https://www.discovery.org/a/91
Almost everything about the basic structure of the universe--for example, the fundamental laws and parameters of physics and the initial distribution of matter and energy--is balanced on a razor's edge for life to occur. As the eminent Princeton physicist Freeman Dyson notes, "There are many . . . lucky accidents in physics. Without such accidents, water could not exist as liquid, chains of carbon atoms could not form complex organic molecules, and hydrogen atoms could not form breakable bridges between molecules" (p. 251)--in short, life as we know it would be impossible.
Scientists call this extraordinary balancing of the parameters of physics and the initial conditions of the universe the "fine-tuning of the cosmos." It has been extensively discussed by philosophers, theologians, and scientists, especially since the early 1970s, with hundreds of articles and dozens of books written on the topic. Today, it is widely regarded as offering by far the most persuasive current argument for the existence of God. For example, theoretical physicist and popular science writer Paul Davies--whose early writings were not particularly sympathetic to theism--claims that with regard to basic structure of the universe, "the impression of design is overwhelming" (Davies, 1988, p. 203). Similarly, in response to the life-permitting fine-tuning of the nuclear resonances responsible for the oxygen and carbon synthesis in stars, the famous astrophysicist Sir Fred Hoyle declares that
I do not believe that any scientists who examined the evidence would fail to draw the inference that the laws of nuclear physics have been deliberately designed with regard to the consequences they produce inside stars. If this is so, then my apparently random quirks have become part of a deep-laid scheme. If not then we are back again at a monstrous sequence of accidents. [Fred Hoyle, in Religion and the Scientists, 1959; quoted in Barrow and Tipler, p. 22]
A few examples of this fine-tuning are listed below:
1. If the initial explosion of the big bang had differed in strength by as little as 1 part in 1060, the universe would have either quickly collapsed back on itself, or expanded too rapidly for stars to form. In either case, life would be impossible. [See Davies, 1982, pp. 90-91. (As John Jefferson Davis points out (p. 140), an accuracy of one part in 10^60 can be compared to firing a bullet at a one-inch target on the other side of the observable universe, twenty billion light years away, and hitting the target.)
2. Calculations indicate that if the strong nuclear force, the force that binds protons and neutrons together in an atom, had been stronger or weaker by as little as 5%, life would be impossible. (Leslie, 1989, pp. 4, 35; Barrow and Tipler, p. 322.)
3. Calculations by Brandon Carter show that if gravity had been stronger or weaker by 1 part in 10 to the 40th power, then life-sustaining stars like the sun could not exist. This would most likely make life impossible. (Davies, 1984, p. 242.)
4. If the neutron were not about 1.001 times the mass of the proton, all protons would have decayed into neutrons or all neutrons would have decayed into protons, and thus life would not be possible. (Leslie, 1989, pp. 39-40 )
5. If the electromagnetic force were slightly stronger or weaker, life would be impossible, for a variety of different reasons. (Leslie, 1988, p. 299.)
Imaginatively, one could think of each instance of fine-tuning as a radio dial: unless all the dials are set exactly right, life would be impossible. Or, one could think of the initial conditions of the universe and the fundamental parameters of physics as a dart board that fills the whole galaxy, and the conditions necessary for life to exist as a small one-foot wide target: unless the dart hits the target, life would be impossible. The fact that the dials are perfectly set, or the dart has hit the target, strongly suggests that someone set the dials or aimed the dart, for it seems enormously improbable that such a coincidence could have happened by chance.
References
Barrow, John and Tipler, Frank. The Anthropic Cosmological Principle. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.
Davies, Paul. The Accidental Universe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.
____________. Superforce: The Search for a Grand Unified Theory of Nature. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984.
____________. The Cosmic Blueprint: New Discoveries in Nature's Creative Ability to Order the Universe. New York, Simon and Schuster, 1988.
Davis, John Jefferson. "The Design Argument, Cosmic "Fine-tuning," and the Anthropic Principle." The International Journal of Philosophy of Religion.
Dirac, P. A. M. "The evolution of the physicist's picture of nature." Scientific American, May 1963.
Hacking, Ian. The Emergence of Probability: A Philosophical Study of Early Ideas About Probability, Induction and Statistical Inference. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975.
Leslie, John. "How to Draw Conclusions From a Fine-Tuned Cosmos." In Robert Russell, et. al., eds., Physics, Philosophy and Theology: A Common Quest for Understanding. Vatican City State: Vatican Observatory Press, pp. 297-312, 1988.
____________. Universes. New York: Routledge, 1989.
Plantinga, Alvin. Warrant and Proper Function. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Sklar, Lawrence. Physics and Chance: Philosophical Issues in the Foundation of Statistical Mechanics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Smart, J. J. C. "Laws of Nature and Cosmic Coincidence", The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 35, No. 140.
Smith, George. "Atheism: The Case Against God." Reprinted in An Anthology of Atheism and Rationalism, edited by Gordon Stein, Prometheus Press, 1980.
Smith, Quentin. "World Ensemble Explanations." Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 67, 1986.
Swinburne, Richard. An Introduction to Confirmation Theory. London: Methuen and Co. Ltd, 1973.
Van Fraassen, Bas. Laws and Symmetry. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.
Weatherford, Roy. Foundations of Probability Theory. Boston, MA: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982.
/end citation
<more about fine tuning in next post>
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<cont'd>
Another list of cosmic fine tuning dials from:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine-tuned_Universe
N, the ratio of the strength of electromagnetism to the strength of gravity for a pair of protons, is approximately 1036. According to Rees, if it were significantly smaller, only a small and short-lived universe could exist.[12]
Epsilon (ε), a measure of the nuclear efficiency of fusion from hydrogen to helium, is 0.007: when four nucleons fuse into helium, 0.007 (0.7%) of their mass is converted to energy. The value of ε is in part determined by the strength of the strong nuclear force.[13] If ε were 0.006, only hydrogen could exist, and complex chemistry would be impossible. According to Rees, if it were above 0.008, no hydrogen would exist, as all the hydrogen would have been fused shortly after the big bang. Other physicists disagree, calculating that substantial hydrogen remains as long as the strong force coupling constant increases by less than about 50%.[10][12]
Omega (Ω), commonly known as the density parameter, is the relative importance of gravity and expansion energy in the Universe. It is the ratio of the mass density of the Universe to the "critical density" and is approximately 1. If gravity were too strong compared with dark energy and the initial metric expansion, the universe would have collapsed before life could have evolved. On the other side, if gravity were too weak, no stars would have formed.[12][14]
Lambda (λ), commonly known as the cosmological constant, describes the ratio of the density of dark energy to the critical energy density of the universe, given certain reasonable assumptions such as positing that dark energy density is a constant. In terms of Planck units, and as a natural dimensionless value, the cosmological constant, λ, is on the order of 10−122.[15] This is so small that it has no significant effect on cosmic structures that are smaller than a billion light-years across. If the cosmological constant were not extremely small, stars and other astronomical structures would not be able to form.[12]
Q, the ratio of the gravitational energy required to pull a large galaxy apart to the energy equivalent of its mass, is around 10−5. If it is too small, no stars can form. If it is too large, no stars can survive because the universe is too violent, according to Rees.[12]
D, the number of spatial dimensions in spacetime, is 3. Rees claims that life could not exist if there were 2 or 4 dimensions of spacetime nor if any other than 1 time dimension existed in spacetime.[12]
An older example is the Hoyle state, the third-lowest energy state of the carbon-12 nucleus, with an energy of 7.656 MeV above the ground level. According to one calculation, if the state's energy were lower than 7.3 or greater than 7.9 MeV, insufficient carbon would exist to support life; furthermore, to explain the universe's abundance of carbon, the Hoyle state must be further tuned to a value between 7.596 and 7.716 MeV. A similar calculation, focusing on the underlying fundamental constants that give rise to various energy levels, concludes that the strong force must be tuned to a precision of at least 0.5%, and the electromagnetic force to a precision of at least 4%, to prevent either carbon production or oxygen production from dropping significantly.[16]
REFERENCES:
1. Rees, Martin (May 3, 2001). Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces That Shape The Universe. New York, NY: Basic Books; First American edition. p. 4.
2. Gribbin. J and Rees. M, Cosmic Coincidences: Dark Matter, Mankind, and Anthropic Cosmology p. 7, 269, 1989, ISBN 0-553-34740-3
3. Davis, Paul (2007). Cosmic Jackpot: Why Our Universe Is Just Right for Life. New York, NY: Orion Publications. p. 2. ISBN 0618592261.
4. Stephen Hawking, 1988. A Brief History of Time, Bantam Books, ISBN 0-553-05340-X, p. 7, 125.
5. Lawrence Joseph Henderson, The fitness of the environment: an inquiry into the biological significance of the properties of matter The Macmillan Company, 1913
6. R. H. Dicke (1961). "Dirac's Cosmology and Mach's Principle". Nature. 192 (4801): 440–441. Bibcode:1961Natur.192..440D. doi:10.1038/192440a0.
7. Heilbron, J. L. The Oxford guide to the history of physics and astronomy, Volume 10 2005, p. 8
8. Profile of Fred Hoyle at OPT. Optcorp.com. Retrieved on 2013-03-11.
9. Paul Davies, 1993. The Accidental Universe, Cambridge University Press, p70-71
10. MacDonald, J., and D. J. Mullan. "Big bang nucleosynthesis: The strong nuclear force meets the weak anthropic principle." Physical Review D 80.4 (2009): 043507. "Contrary to a common argument that a small increase in the strength of the strong force would lead to destruction of all hydrogen in the big bang due to binding of the diproton and the dineutron with a catastrophic impact on life as we know it, we show that provided the increase in strong force coupling constant is less than about 50% substantial amounts of hydrogen remain."
11. Abbott, Larry (1991). "The Mystery of the Cosmological Constant". Scientific American. 3 (1): 78.
12. Lemley, Brad. "Why is There Life?". Discover magazine. Retrieved 23 August 2014.
13. Morison, Ian (2013). "9.14: A universe fit for intelligent life". Introduction to astronomy and cosmology. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley. ISBN 9781118681527.
14. Sean Carroll and Michio Kaku (2014). How the Universe Works 3. End of the Universe. Discovery Channel.
15. John D. Barrow The Value of the Cosmological Constant
16. Livio, M.; Hollowell, D.; Weiss, A.; Truran, J. W. (27 July 1989). "The anthropic significance of the existence of an excited state of 12C". Nature. 340 (6231): 281–284. Bibcode:1989Natur.340..281L. doi:10.1038/340281a0.
Creationists argue that the tuning of all these "dials" in favor of life implies a tuner that favors life. This position is called the "strong anthropic principle". Critics of the strong anthropic principle propose the "weak anthropic principle". They posit that many universes exist, enough that one just happens to exist with the dials set right by chance, and therefore this is the universe in which the discussion is taking place. The problem is that those alternate universes cannot in principle be observed from this one (thus they are not empirical, but a fudge invented without evidence to avoid a conclusion the fudger doesn't like), and it is trimmed by Occam's razor, the principle of favoring the simpler answer.
The tendentiousness of the opposition to this idea is illustrated by the title and first paragraph of this article in Evolution News & Science Today :
"TO AVOID THE IMPLICATIONS OF COSMIC FINE-TUNING, A CONTINUING QUEST" "Remember, the multiverse is the currently favored prophylactic against the theistic implications of cosmic fine-tuning. So if the following sounds a bit abstruse, remember what’s at stake."
<problems with evolution follow in next post>
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In 1859, Charles Darwin published "The Origin of the Species" propounding a theory that complex organisms arose gradually over eaons from simpler forms of life by the operation of natural selection on small random mutations. This was not a theory of the origin of life itself, but a theory of the generation of the vast variety of species observed today given life's original existence. He studied fossils and noted that forms existed in the past which were different from forms present. There were problems with the theory from the start. First, it is implausible on the face of it. "It just happened" is not the sort of thing one usually would classify as a "scientific explanation". The second law of thermodynamics was still new, and its implications not well understood, but complex systems creating, or greatly improving themselves was well outside the range of empirical observation, then as now. While seeming improbable, the improbability was difficult to quantify because the workings of life were an almost complete mystery; a huge "black box" into which the problems of the theory could be swept. This is an "evolution of the gaps", the confidence that future discoveries would explain the problems away.
One problem recognized from the start even by Darwin himself is the discontinuous nature of the fossil record. While gradual transitions could be documented from about the "family" level downward, above that level the types seemed to all appear suddenly, without transitional forms from previous families. One would expect a continuous line of each species back to the earliest macroscopic antecedents, if the theory were true. Darwin notes the problem in his book:
"Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory. The explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record." Charles Darwin (1859), The Origin of Species, p. 280.
"Evolution of the gaps", pesky evidence! But he was confident that the gaps would be filled by more transitional forms as the fossil record became more complete. (Update 2018-It hasn't)
Another aspect of the fossil record which was found rather early and does not fit well with Darwin's theory is the Cambrian Explosion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambrian_explosion
The Cambrian explosion or Cambrian radiation was the relatively short span event, occurring approximately 541 million years ago in the Cambrian period, during which most major animal phyla appeared, as indicated by the fossil record. Lasting for about the next 20–25 million years, it resulted in the divergence of most modern metazoan phyla. Additionally, the event was accompanied by major diversification of other organisms. Prior to the Cambrian explosion, most organisms were simple, composed of individual cells occasionally organized into colonies. Over the following 70 to 80 million years, the rate of diversification accelerated by an order of magnitude and the diversity of life began to resemble that of today. Almost all present animal phyla appeared during this period.
It is difficult to see, with a supposed random distribution of mutations, why such a great variety of phyla would appear in such a short period, in sharp contrast to previous and subsequent periods. This has still not been adequately explained.
More and more thru the decades has been discovered about the workings of life, and at each turn the many problems in detail were swept into the black box of the yet unknown. But at long last we are opening the last box, molecular biology, and instead of explanations for old problems we are discovering new and apparently intractable problems with the problem theory. We find not just staggering absolute complexity, but indeed many examples of "irreducible complexity": complex systems with many interrelated components which are not amenable to explanation by gradual change plus natural selection, because the system needs ALL the components to convey any benefit at all, and thus be selected for. In order to provide any survival benefit, the whole system must appear in one swell foop AT THE SAME TIME and integrated. The improbability of this is far worse than the mere product of the improbabilities of the component subsystems.
https://www.amazon.com/Darwins-Black-Box-Biochemical-Challenge/dp/0743290313
For other biochemical problems with the evolutionary view of the origins of life, see:
Stephen Mayer - Signature in the Cell
<continued>
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This by no means exhausts the evidence for Theism and Christianity. I haven't completed writing up a summary of such evidence. I have taken a chronological approach to writing it up, starting with cosmology and biology (I am not done with biology), and I plan to continue through archeology, history, and sociology, ethics, etc. This is what I've written up so far. In the meanwhile, if you are interested in pursuing the evidence further, I can suggest a few resources:
C S Lewis - Mere Christianity - An introduction to the actual claims of Christianity (most non-Christians today have a distorted view)
Criticism of Scientism by Agnostics:
David Berlinski - The Deniable Darwin and Other Essays
- The Devil's Delusion - From the cover blurb:
Has anyone provided a proof of God’s inexistence? Not even close.
Has quantum cosmology explained the emergence of the universe or why it is here? Not even close.
Have the sciences explained why our universe seems to be fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life? Not even close.
Are physicists and biologists willing to believe in anything so long as it is not religious thought? Close enough.
Has rationalism in moral thought provided us with an understanding of what is good, what is right, and what is moral? Not close enough.
Has secularism in the terrible twentieth century been a force for good? Not even close to being close.
Is there a narrow and oppressive orthodoxy of thought and opinion within the sciences? Close enough.
Does anything in the sciences or in their philosophy justify the claim that religious belief is irrational? Not even ballpark.
Is scientific atheism a frivolous exercise in intellectual contempt? Dead on.
Atheists or agnostics who have converted to theism and/or Christianity by examining the evidence:
Lee Strobel - The Case for Christ
C. S. Lewis - Surprised by Joy
Hugh Ross - (many titles)
Anthony Flew - There is a God
Dr. Ed Feser - The Road from Atheism
Justin Brooke
David Wood - (seen on Bit Chute formerly YT Acts 17 Apologetics)
Dr. Michael Guillen
Dr. Michael Egnor
Jordan Monge
Peter Byrom
Abraham Lincoln – - "Abraham Lincoln’s Journey From Atheism To Christianity"
Bill Hayden – Australia’s second longest-serving Governor-General and was a renowned atheist for all of his life. Bill Received Jesus At 85
Rosaria Champagne Butterfield: Former Lesbian, Feminist, Atheist Professor. In what she describes as a train wreck, Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, a former tenured professor of English and women’s studies at Syracuse University, shares the incredible story of her journey to Christ, laying aside lesbianism, feminism and Atheism.
Michael McIntyre – Multi-Millionaire Atheist Who Hated God But Now, He Radically Accepts Jesus
Jennifer Fulwiler, Leah Libresco and Holly Ordway – Three Powerful women whose intellectual journey led to their conversion from atheism to Christianity.
Dr. Wayne Rossiter – Former atheist biologist who once described himself as a “staunch and cantankerous atheist” who sought every opportunity to destroy Christianity where it stood.
Jim Warner Wallace – Was a Smart Cold-Case homicide atheist detective who worked for the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD).
Dr. Greg Lehman – One day, he finished a medical consultation with his usual “Do you have any questions?” The walk-in patient stared at him and asked: “Have you accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as you personal Savior?”
Philosopher Edward Feser: The Associate Professor of Philosophy at Pasadena City College, previously a Visiting Assistant Professor at Loyola Marymount University, and a Visiting Scholar at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center. Feser speaks on how Studying Philosophy Led him To God.
Prof. Sarah Irving-Stonebraker – Professor Sarah Irving-Stonebraker is a Senior Lecturer in Modern European History at Western Sydney University in Australia.
In her article,“How Oxford and Peter Singer drove me from atheism to Jesus,” Sarah shares the incredible story that led her to Jesus Christ. Dr. Peter Singer is a fervent atheist and a champion of the idea that some human lives have little or no value. I am sure that if he learned he helped “drive” a fellow atheist to Jesus, he would be more than a little annoyed.
See Also: Christianity Is Spreading In My Country: Iran’s Intelligence Minister Laments
Howard Storm – Atheist Professor whose Near-death Experience drew him to Jesus Christ.
Ronald Dabdoub – As an atheist, Ronald wanted to know the truth about God. For 30 days he asked God to prove his existence with more than words. Days later, he had a vision of Jesus Christ, and that was the start of a new life for him.
Barak Lurie – Former Jewish atheist and profitable real estate/ business lawyer who found Jesus as he searched for truth. Author of Atheism Kills.
Caleb Kaltenbach: Former Atheist Raised By Gay Parents, but he embraced Jesus and today he’s a preacher of Jesus Christ.
Paul Ernest – Former Atheist Scholar, Paul Ernest has always been a deep thinker. Whether it was science or philosophy, he was the one constantly asking “Why” and “How?”.
Alexis Mason – A former Militant Atheist
Steve Tillman – Former atheist leader who did everything to suppress the idea of God.
Dezmond Boudreaux – “The whole time I was searching for peace and truth, but could never find it.” “When I found Christ, that’s when I truly found what I was looking for.” – Dezmond.
Guillaume Bignon – A Staunch Atheist Who Hated God, Visited Church “As One Visits A Zoo To See Exotic Animals” But Then God Caught Him.
Jessica Jenkins – Was a devout atheist who believed in science and the theory of evolution.
Miracles:
C. S Lewis - Miracles
Craig Keenor - Miracles
Eric Metaxas - Miracles
David Brooks - Neural Buddhist
Apologists:
C. S. Lewis
John Lennox
Josh McDowell
Hugh Ross
YouTube
Red Pen Logic
Inspiring Philosophy
I would stay away from Ken Hamm of Answers From Genesis, and Dr. Duane Gish and the Institute for Creation research. They seem to me to be supporting good conclusions by bad arguments. Sort of the way you atheists must think of Richard Carrier.
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Of course not! Jews are not conspiring as a race to turn Europe into an Islamic bloc which will murder them and join in attacking Israel, and only an utter dolt would entertain the notion for a second. Many Jews have liked living in Europe and have built honest productive lives for generations, and now they are having to leave because of this crap. This is completely a leftist crime, and not all Jews are leftists. You try to taint every legitimate issue with your pet peeve but you never defend the connection, you just assert it and call people names. The notion that an ethnicity is a conspiracy is absurd.
And you contradict yourselves. You say that it is the Jewish religion that prompts Jews to hostility and domination plots toward gentiles and Christians and that Zionism is part of the plot, then when you list subversive Jews in places of power you list atheist Jews whose family has never darkened the door of a synagogue, sometimes for generations, and who are more hostile to Israel than you are. You say the Jews are to be blamed because they killed Christ, then you say modern Jews are not descendants of the Old and New Testament Jews. You deny the historical Holocaust by way of trying to improve the image of Nazis, then call for a holocaust. If a holocaust is bad, why are you calling for one? If it is not bad, why do you spend so much energy trying to deny the 20th century European one? Not only are each of your claims unsupported and absurd in isolation, they don't even fit together into a consistent lie.
The only effective lie the socialists have nowadays is accusing US of being YOU. If you did not exist, they could not win anything. They would have to invent you in order to have anything to say after their policies and ideology have been so totally discredited historically.
In fact, every day in every way groypers support the same things the "cultural Marxists" support, from the centrality of "group identity" through the abolition of the civil rights enumerated in the Constitution (all of them, without exception) through segregation, to the opposition to the ideal/goal of limited government and freedom itself. This is how you know they are false flag leftists-BECAUSE ALL OF THE THINGS THEY ADVOCATE ARE LEFTIST THINGS.
Your man Spencer endorsed Biden/Harris in '20. Nick Fuentes tried to urge Georgia conservatives to stay home and not vote in the runoff elections that handed the Dems the effective majority in the Senate. You are pulling out all the stops to ensure that conservatives lose, you are doing this OPENLY, and you expect us NOT TO NOTICE? That is why you denigrate EVERY EFFECTIVE CONSERVATIVE VOICE, not just the Jewish ones. Fascist and Marxists (two flavors of socialism) have been playing this game since the 1920s: "If you're not one of us you're one of them". BS. Occasionally they fight each other but most of the time they cooperate against liberty.
We conservatives have some political power and a following. You racists have nothing. You will always have nothing. You will always accomplish nothing as you have accomplished nothing to this day. The only effective checks on the socialist agenda have been accomplished by us, with no help from you, because you are not on the side of freedom. "A difference that MAKES no difference IS no difference."
Both commies and Nazis will:
Divide the public and foster hate along class/religious/gender/class lines
Segregate
Central plan the economy
Nationalize the press
End freedom of speech
Confiscate weapons
Persecute all non state sponsored religions
End all civil rights, including the rights enumerated in the US Constitution (and the Magna Carta).
Evict innocent citizens from their homes
Mobilize the apparatus of law and tax enforcement against their political enemies
Slander, imprison, and murder their political enemies
Eliminate or absorb all public organizations
Replace commercial entertainment media with a boring stream of propaganda.
The minor, insignificant differences between communism and Nazism are only important to communists and Nazis, not to anybody who loves freedom. You won't distract us from our fight for freedom with your internal socialist squabble over who should be our master.
"He is in great fear, not knowing what mighty one may suddenly appear, wielding the Ring, and assailing him with war, seeking to cast him down and take his place. That we should wish to cast him down and have no one in his place is not a thought that occurs to his mind."-J.R.R. Tolkien, "Lord of the Rings"
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The whole series had plot holes and continuity issues. The first film worse than the rest. The first film gets points for an interesting premise, and the exposition thereof, and the action, and that makes it great. Matrix Reloaded wins as an action/SF film. An action movie needs first a justification for you to care who wins the action scenes. The survival of the human race will do nicely. Second, it needs good action. Check (innovative cutting edge action ramped up way past the first movie, good). An action SF also needs good special effects. Check. As a hard science fiction nerd I say the whole series has problems with the details which are irritating. The higher philosophical pretensions (and the hard science fiction cred) of the first film were no more sound than those of the sequel. You just noticed it more because you were now taking the innovative premise for granted, and because you were older when you first saw the sequels. I watch action films for action. I will not watch a drama for drama. Sure, a plot would have been nice, but the sequels, and Reloaded more than Revolutions, succeeds without much of one.
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This is Bulverism, not an argument. Instead of addressing facts or arguments, you posit an irrational or ignoble CAUSE for the arguments, to give yourself and your readers an excuse to dismiss the arguments without consideration. For those who fall for it, this fallacy obviously works as well against truth as falsehood.
Bulverism is the fallacy they teach in schools nowadays instead of critical thinking. You posit an irrational or ignoble CAUSE for the opponent's position, by which you seek to excuse yourself and your reader for dismissing the opponent's arguments without thought:
Quote from Bulverism by C. S. Lewis:
You must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong. The modern method is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became so silly.
In the course of the last fifteen years I have found this vice so common that I have had to invent a name for it. I call it "Bulverism". Some day I am going to write the biography of its imaginary inventor, Ezekiel Bulver, whose destiny was determined at the age of five when he heard his mother say to his father — who had been maintaining that two sides of a triangle were together greater than a third — "Oh you say that because you are a man." "At that moment", E. Bulver assures us, "there flashed across my opening mind the great truth that refutation is no necessary part of argument. Assume that your opponent is wrong, and explain his error, and the world will be at your feet. Attempt to prove that he is wrong or (worse still) try to find out whether he is wrong or right, and the natural dynamism of our age will thrust you to the wall." That is how Bulver became one of the makers of the Twentieth Century.
Suppose I think, after doing my accounts, that I have a large balance at the bank. And suppose you want to find out whether this belief of mine is "wishful thinking." You can never come to any conclusion by examining my psychological condition. Your only chance of finding out is to sit down and work through the sum yourself. When you have checked my figures, then, and then only, will you know whether I have that balance or not. If you find my arithmetic correct, then no amount of vapouring about my psychological condition can be anything but a waste of time. If you find my arithmetic wrong, then it may be relevant to explain psychologically how I came to be so bad at my arithmetic, and the doctrine of the concealed wish will become relevant — but only after you have yourself done the sum and discovered me to be wrong on purely arithmetical grounds. It is the same with all thinking and all systems of thought. If you try to find out which are tainted by speculating about the wishes of the thinkers, you are merely making a fool of yourself. You must first find out on purely logical grounds which of them do, in fact, break down as arguments. Afterwards, if you like, go on and discover the psychological causes of the error.
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@junevandermark952 "What did Jordan say that you believe is "unquestionable" truth"
He said that studies show that in societies where the reversal of what are assumed to be culturally defined gender roles in careers is encouraged the individual choice for traditional career roles INCREASES. This is an absurd challenge. Even liars tell the truth part of the time. Did you really think nobody could answer that?
"Jordan USED his license as a psychologist to go on social media to preach"
Nobody seriously thinks his popularity and prominence is due to a license and he clearly distinguished those of his points which were based on his clinical training and practice. Professionals can have views and express them. They can even have religious views and express them.
" he wouldn't have all this trouble brought onto him by the Canadian Board of Psychologists."
The balance of the evidence does not bear out your assertion. The Board sought to suppress JP for political reasons. Nothing he did or said was beyond his civil rights or professional ethics. Depending on the depth of their self-importance, it may be conceivable that they THOUGHT that his license had something to do with his success. That does not excuse what they did. They sent a message that clinical licenses are hostage to political conformity.
"Just as the Catholic popes wanted the Protestants to be put to death for heresy … the Jews wanted Jesus and his heretical followers to be put to death for heresy against them.
I agree with the words of the now-dead Christopher Hitchens … “Religion poisons everything.”
You cite two instances from two religions and generalize them as characteristic of religion as a whole. Religion is such a broad term that almost nothing can be generalized concerning religion as a whole, certainly not religions as opposed to other ideologies, notably atheism. As an antidote to ideological murder, atheism has a singularly abysmal track record. From the Jacobin Reign of Terror in the French Revolution, through the Soviet Union, the Third Reich, Communist China, Cuba, and the Pol Pot regime; the result of a society based on atheism has invariably been bloodbath after bloodbath. The USSR alone murdered more of its own civilians than have ever been killed in all the inquisitions, pogroms, and purely religious wars in recorded history, and they only lasted: what? 80 or so years?
The very concept of tolerating other ideologies you're getting from Protestant Christianity. And you're currently speaking out in opposition to that principle. It's you that's defending the punishment of thought and expression here, not any religion.
Protestantism created the modern libertarian west. We (Protestants) ended slavery; implemented religious freedom, political freedom, academic freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press FIRST, and thus caused the academic, scientific, technological, and material progress that followed; and most of the rest of the world hasn't caught up with it yet. John 8:32 "You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
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@johanngambolputty5351
All Fascists and Nazis are Leftists. Mussolini was an editor of a leftist paper. Prior to the war Mussolini and FDR, the progressive (which at the time meant socialism plus eugenics plus Jim Crow laws) were exchanging political love letters praising one another and also in the American and Italian press.
Mussolini and his party developed Fascism because Marx's predicted proletarian uprising, long overdue by Communist prediction, never happened. Mussolini noted that despite ideology, people still fought for their country, so he added ardent nationalism to socialism. Unlike the Nazis, there was nothing acutely racial about Mussolini's nationalism (he was not anti-semitic, for example). When he took power he got a congratulatory telegram from Lenin for being a leftist leader who took control of Italy.
Hitler made no bones about being a leftist:
#1. “I have learned a great deal from Marxism” … “as I do not hesitate to admit”
#2. [My task is to] “convert the German volk (people) to socialism without simply killing off the old individualists”
#3. “If we are socialists, then we must definitely be anti-semites – and the opposite, in that case, is Materialism and Mammonism, which we seek to oppose.” “How, as a socialist, can you not be an anti-semite?”
#4. We must “find and travel the road from individualism to socialism without revolution”.
#5. “Why need we trouble to socialize banks and factories? We socialize human beings.”
#6. “We are socialists, we are enemies of today’s capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions” 1927
#7. “What Marxism, Leninism and Stalinism failed to accomplish we shall be in a position to achieve.”
Select planks from the Nazi party platform:
7. We demand that the State make it its duty to provide opportunities of employment first of all for its own Citizens. If it is not possible to maintain the entire population of the State, then foreign nationals (non-Citizens) are to be expelled from the Reich.
9. All German Citizens must have equal rights and duties.
10. It must be the first duty of every Citizen to carry out intellectual or physical work. Individual activity must not be harmful to the public interest and must be pursued within the framework of the community and for the general good.
We therefore demand:
11. The abolition of all income obtained without labor or effort.
Breaking the Servitude of Interest.
12. In view of the tremendous sacrifices in property and blood demanded of the nation by every war, personal gain from the war must be termed a crime against the nation. We therefore demand the total confiscation of all war profits.
13. We demand the nationalization of all enterprises (already) converted into corporations (trusts).
14. We demand profit-sharing in large enterprises.
15. We demand the large-scale development of old-age pension schemes.
16. We demand the creation and maintenance of a sound middle class; the immediate communalization of the large department stores, which are to be leased at low rates to small tradesmen. We demand the most careful consideration for the owners of small businesses in orders placed by national, state, or community authorities.
17. We demand land reform in accordance with our national needs and a law for expropriation without compensation of land for public purposes. Abolition of ground rent and prevention of all speculation in land.
18. We demand ruthless battle against those who harm the common good by their activities. Persons committing base crimes against the People, usurers, profiteers, etc., are to be punished by death without regard to religion or race.
20. In order to make higher education – and thereby entry into leading positions – available to every able and industrious German, the State must provide a thorough restructuring of our entire public educational system. The courses of study at all educational institutions are to be adjusted to meet the requirements of practical life. Understanding of the concept of the State must be achieved through the schools (teaching of civics) at the earliest age at which it can be grasped. We demand the education at the public expense of specially gifted children of poor parents, without regard to the latters’ position or occupation.
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There really is no time for such an "evolution" to have taken place. The time and death of Jesus is attested by friendly and hostile forces, and we have COPIES of the New Testament books close to the time of the authors and contemporaries of Jesus. Back to the first two centuries, less than two hundred years after the originals were written and incomplete books and fragments much closer to the time of their writing by Jesus' contemporaries. In the strictest sense of your question, the dating of the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John) is the most direct answer to your question, but almost any NT (New Testament)book counts as a historical account of Jesus in his historical and religious context, because all were written by his contemporaries and refer to him. Here are a few of the oldest NT MSS (manuscripts). These manuscripts were dated by antiquity scholars by commonly recognized methods, such as analysis of character styles
P67| contains Matt. 3:9,15; 5:20-22, 25-28| MS date circa 200AD, approx. 130 years after the original was written| location: Barcelona, Fundacion San Lucas Evangelista, P. Barc.1
P66| John 1:1-6:11, 35-14:26; fragment of 14:29-21:9| book originally written 70s AD;
MS Date circa 200 AD; approx. 130 years after the original| location: Cologne, Geneva
P46 (Chester Beatty Papyrus)| Rom. 5:17-6:3, 5-14; 8:15-25, 27-35; 10:1-11, 22, 24-33, 35; 16:1-23, 25-27; Heb.; 1 & 2 Cor., Eph., Gal., Phil., Col.; 1 Thess. 1:1, 9-10; 2:1-3; 5:5-9, 23-28| books written 50s - 70s AD; MSS date circa 200 AD, aprox 150 years after orig.| location: Chester Beatty Museum, Dublin & Ann Arbor, Michigan, University of Michigan Library
P52| John 18:31-33, 37-38| book originally written circa AD 96; MS date circa AD 125; aprox 29 years after orig.| location: John Rylands Library, Manchester, England
(I apologize for the paragraph format of this data, every time I try to post the info on a graph, either the proportionally spaced font misalligns the columns, or the comment section software removes all the whitespace and turns it into a total dogs breakfast. Given the platform, this is the best that I can do.)
Continuing with New Testament historical documentation:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorship_of_the_Pauline_epistles
"There is nearly universal consensus in modern New Testament scholarship on a core group of authentic Pauline epistles whose authorship is rarely contested: Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon. Several additional letters bearing Paul's name are disputed among scholars, namely Ephesians, Colossians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Timothy, and Titus." This is not the Christian view, this is the view of SECULAR New Testament scholars.
The above evidences, among others show that the New Testament itself, is a valid contemporary historical witness to the life and ministry of one Jesus of Nazareth. I don't say you didn't learn what you said, but you didn't learn it from a bona fide historian or antiquities schollar. Richard Carrier, for instance is nothing of the sort.
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@admontblanc "their extraordinary efforts to turn Europe's nations into these exact kinds of places"
Of course not! Jews are not conspiring as a race to turn Europe into an Islamic bloc which will murder them and join in attacking Israel, and only an utter dolt would entertain the notion for a second. Many Jews have liked living in Europe and have built honest productive lives for generations, and now they are having to leave because of this crap. This is completely a leftist crime, and not all Jews are leftists. You try to taint every legitimate issue with your pet peeve but you never defend the connection, you just assert it and call people names. The notion that an ethnicity is a conspiracy is absurd.
And you contradict yourselves. You say that it is the Jewish religion that prompts Jews to hostility and domination plots toward gentiles and Christians and that Zionism is part of the plot, then when you list subversive Jews in places of power you list atheist Jews whose family has never darkened the door of a synagogue, sometimes for generations, and who are more hostile to Israel than you are. You say the Jews are to be blamed because they killed Christ, then you say modern Jews are not descendants of the Old and New Testament Jews. You deny the historical Holocaust by way of trying to improve the image of Nazis, then call for a holocaust. If a holocaust is bad, why are you calling for one? If it is not bad, why do you spend so much energy trying to deny the 20th century European one? Not only are each of your claims unsupported and absurd in isolation, they don't even fit together into a consistent lie.
The only effective lie the socialists have nowadays is accusing US of being YOU. If you did not exist, they could not win anything. They would have to invent you in order to have anything to say after their policies and ideology have been so totally discredited historically.
In fact, every day in every way groypers support the same things the "cultural Marxists" support, from the centrality of "group identity" through the abolition of the civil rights enumerated in the Constitution (all of them, without exception) through segregation, to the opposition to the ideal/goal of limited government and freedom itself. This is how you know they are false flag leftists-BECAUSE ALL OF THE THINGS THEY ADVOCATE ARE LEFTIST THINGS.
Your man Spencer endorsed Biden/Harris in '20. Nick Fuentes tried to urge Georgia conservatives to stay home and not vote in the runoff elections that handed the Dems the effective majority in the Senate. You are pulling out all the stops to ensure that conservatives lose, you are doing this OPENLY, and you expect us NOT TO NOTICE? That is why you denigrate EVERY EFFECTIVE CONSERVATIVE VOICE, not just the Jewish ones. Fascist and Marxists (two flavors of socialism) have been playing this game since the 1920s: "If you're not one of us you're one of them". BS. Occasionally they fight each other but most of the time they cooperate against liberty.
We conservatives have some political power and a following. You racists have nothing. You will always have nothing. You will always accomplish nothing as you have accomplished nothing to this day. The only effective checks on the socialist agenda have been accomplished by us, with no help from you, because you are not on the side of freedom. "A difference that MAKES no difference IS no difference."
Both commies and Nazis will:
Divide the public and foster hate along class/religious/gender/class lines
Segregate
Central plan the economy
Nationalize the press
End freedom of speech
Confiscate weapons
Persecute all non state sponsored religions
End all civil rights, including the rights enumerated in the US Constitution (and the Magna Carta).
Evict innocent citizens from their homes
Mobilize the apparatus of law and tax enforcement against their political enemies
Slander, imprison, and murder their political enemies
Eliminate or absorb all public organizations
Replace commercial entertainment media with a boring stream of propaganda.
The minor, insignificant differences between communism and Nazism are only important to communists and Nazis, not to anybody who loves freedom. You won't distract us from our fight for freedom with your internal socialist squabble over who should be our master.
"He is in great fear, not knowing what mighty one may suddenly appear, wielding the Ring, and assailing him with war, seeking to cast him down and take his place. That we should wish to cast him down and have no one in his place is not a thought that occurs to his mind."-J.R.R. Tolkien, "Lord of the Rings"
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Not one of the things you attribute to the West started with the west (the Holocaust was an act of a regime rebelling against the foundational values of the west); and compassion and wisdom, joy and happiness didn't start with India.
Protestantism created the modern libertarian west. We (Protestants) ended slavery; implemented religious freedom, political freedom, academic freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press FIRST, and thus caused the academic, scientific, technological, and material progress that followed; and most of the rest of the world hasn't caught up with it yet. John 8:32 "You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
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@Andy_Sidaris "Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."
We held out for one more election, and our prudence was vindicated. If you pine for more destruction and death than was necessary, shame on you. If the 2nd Amendment was as toothless as you insist, they wouldn't keep attacking it. I suspect you wanted a different outcome than the restoration of the Republic. That's the only reason why I can imagine that you're still bitter. (Also, show me your bullet wounds, if you did something different.)
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@x "Hitler was a Catholic. "
Nope.. It is true that Hitler when he was a politician seeking office expressed certain pro-Christian statements. But in his private remarks to his officials he made it clear where he really stood as has been revealed by seized Nazi government documents and the notes of an author who planned to publish a collection of Hitler's remarks at the dinner table.
Dr Zoellner and [Catholic Bishop of Munster] Count Galen have tried to make clear to me that Christianity consists in faith in Christ as the son of God. That makes me laugh... No, Christianity is not dependent upon the Apostle's Creed... True Christianity is represented by the party, and the German people are now called by the party and especially the Fuehrer to a real Christianity... the Fuehrer is the herald of a new revelation."
— Hans Kerrl, Nazi Minister for Church Affairs, 1937
During the war Alfred Rosenberg formulated a thirty-point program for the National Reich Church, which included:
The National Reich Church claims exclusive right and control over all Churches.
The National Church is determined to exterminate foreign Christian faiths imported into Germany in the ill-omened year 800.
The National Church demands immediate cessation of the publishing and dissemination of the Bible.
The National Church will clear away from its altars all Crucifixes, Bibles, and pictures of Saints.
On the altars there must be nothing but "Mein Kampf" and to the left of the altar a sword.
Prior to the Reichstag vote for the Enabling Act under which Hitler gained legislative powers with which he went on to permanently dismantle the Weimar Republic, Hitler promised the Reichstag on 23 March 1933, that he would not interfere with the rights of the churches. However, with power secured in Germany, Hitler quickly broke this promise. Various historians have written that the goal of the Nazi Kirchenkampf (Church Struggle) entailed not only ideological struggle, but ultimately the eradication of the Churches. However, leading Nazis varied in the importance they attached to the Church Struggle.
William Shirer wrote that "under the leadership of Rosenberg, Bormann and Himmler, who were backed by Hitler, the Nazi regime intended to destroy Christianity in Germany, if it could, and substitute the old paganism of the early tribal Germanic gods and the new paganism of the Nazi extremists." During a speech on 27 October 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt revealed evidence of Hitler's plan to abolish all religions in Germany, declaring:
Your government has in its possession another document, made in Germany by Hitler’s Government… It is a plan to abolish all existing religions—Catholic, Protestant, Mohammedan, Hindu, Buddhist, and Jewish alike. The property of all churches will be seized by the Reich and its puppets. The cross and all other symbols of religion are to be forbidden. The clergy are to be forever liquidated, silenced under penalty of the concentration camps, where even now so many fearless men are being tortured because they have placed God above Hitler.
Hitler himself possessed radical instincts in relation to the continuing conflict with the Catholic and Protestant Churches in Germany. Though he occasionally spoke of wanting to delay the Church struggle and was prepared to restrain his anti-clericalism out of political considerations, his "own inflammatory comments gave his immediate underlings all the license they needed to turn up the heat in the 'Church Struggle, confident that they were 'working towards the Fuhrer'". According to the Goebbels Diaries, Hitler hated Christianity. In an 8 April 1941 entry, Goebbels wrote "He hates Christianity, because it has crippled all that is noble in humanity."
In Bullock's assessment, though raised a Catholic, Hitler "believed neither in God nor in conscience", retained some regard for the organizational power of Catholicism, but had contempt for its central teachings, which he said, if taken to their conclusion, "would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure". (Bullock wrote.)
In Hitler's eyes, Christianity was a religion fit only for slaves; he detested its ethics in particular. Its teaching, he declared, was a rebellion against the natural law of selection by struggle and the survival of the fittest.
— Extract from Hitler: A Study in Tyranny, by Alan Bullock
Writing for Yad Vashem, the historian Michael Phayer wrote that by the latter 1930s, church officials knew that the long-term aim of Hitler was the "total elimination of Catholicism and of the Christian religion", but that given the prominence of Christianity in Germany, this was necessarily a long-term goal. According to Bullock, Hitler intended to destroy the influence of the Christian churches in Germany after the war. In his memoirs, Hitler's chief architect Albert Speer recalled that when drafting his plans for the "new Berlin", he consulted Protestant and Catholic authorities, but was "curtly informed" by Hitler's private secretary Martin Bormann that churches were not to receive building sites. Kershaw wrote that, in Hitler's scheme for the Germanization of Eastern Europe, he made clear that there would be "no place in this utopia for the Christian Churches'.
Geoffrey Blainey wrote that Hitler and his Fascist ally Mussolini were atheists. "The aggressive spread of atheism in the Soviet Union alarmed many German Christians", wrote Blainey, and with the Nazis becoming the main opponent of Communism in Germany: "[Hitler] himself saw Christianity as a temporary ally, for in his opinion 'one is either a Christian or a German'. To be both was impossible. Nazism itself was a religion, a pagan religion, and Hitler was its high priest... Its high altar [was] Germany itself and the German people, their soil and forests and language and traditions". Nonetheless, a number of early confidants of Hitler detailed the Führer's complete lack of religious belief. One close confidant, Otto Strasser, disclosed in his 1940 book, Hitler and I, that Hitler was a true disbeliever, succinctly stating: Hitler is an atheist.
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You claim that those who criticize Jews are especially punished. But I can just tell that if you really believed that, down to your toes, you would never dare to criticize Jews yourself. You are a bully, and a bully never picks on the one he thinks is powerful. The notion that an ethnicity is a conspiracy is absurd. The pogrom racket is always the same. You envy and resent Jews for prospering, so you want to displace them and steal their stuff. You need an excuse, so the envy and larceny and bigotry in your heart you project to your intended victims.
And you contradict yourself. You say that it is the Jewish religion that prompts Jews to hostility and domination plots toward gentiles and Christians and that Zionism is part of the plot, then when you list subversive Jews in places of power you list atheist Jews whose family has never darkened the door of a synagogue, sometimes for generations, and who are more hostile to Israel than you are. You say the Jews are to be blamed because they killed Christ, then you say modern Jews are not descendants of the Old and New Testament Jews. You deny the historical holocaust by way of trying to improve the image of Nazis, then call for a holocaust. If a holocaust is bad, why are you calling for one? If it is not bad, why do you spend so much energy trying to deny the 20th century European one? Not only are each of your claims unsupported and absurd in isolation, they don't even fit together into a consistent lie.
Now watch these groypers call me a Jew. (As if that were an answer)
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@rh-sd7tf "Schools that receive less funding have lower educational standards."
<link deleted because the channel won't let me post links>
" In the mid 1950s education spending began a rapid increase, from a low of 2.6 percent in 1953. Education spending peaked at 5.7 percent in 1976 before declining for the next decade to 4.7 percent of GDP in 1984.
In the mid 1980s education spending began to increase again. It flatlined at about 5.3 percent of GDP in the 1990s, but resumed its growth in the 2000s, reaching 6.1 percent in 2010 before declining to 5.6 percent GDP in 2015. In 2022 education spending was 6.9 percent GDP. "
(end quote)
We're spending more on education now than we did when it worked. Obviously, throwing money at the teachers unions isn't the answer or we would have the best education system in the world. Several states are passing school choice measures so things should improve from here on out. The decline started when Jimmy Carter legalized public sector unions and established the federal Department of Education. Eliminate those two mistakes and bring in school choice (vouchers) and we're good.
The situation with the teacher's union is not comparable with a private sector situation where only the wage workers are unionized and all the salaried employees are not and the union negotiates against the management. Not only the teachers, but the entire local, state, and federal administrative hierarchy is union. There is no countervailing power to negotiate against them. The unions, and the unions alone completely control the system from top to bottom so there is nobody else to blame. Nobody else has input. The local school boards and PTAs are supposed to exercise effective oversight, but the establishment has such power that when parents try to exercise oversight, the establishment calls the FBI director on speed dial to get them investigated for "terrorism".
The only aspect of K-12 education not fully under the control of the union oligarchs is the budget, and all that ever happens to the budget is it goes up. Before Jimmy Carter established the federal Department of Education and legalized public sector unions, the US had a world class primary and secondary education system. Now we're spending more and getting less, and we don't compare favorably with other nations in education. They aren't outspending us, they just don't have an empowered clique running their system as a jobs program for teachers and administrators.
Private schools can outperform most public schools for the same amount of money. Spending the same amount and getting more for your buck is the opposite of wasting money. This result is not limited to "prep" type schools with larger budgets than public schools, but applies to parochial schools as well, which usually operate on considerably smaller budgets than public schools. Think what they could do with the same per student allocation as the public schools get (and maybe a church subsidy, as well)!
<link deleted>
Even home schooled children, with the lowest "school budget" of all, and generally without teachers with masters degrees in education generally outperform public school educated children.
<link deleted>
It is the current system that is wasting money hand over fist. And a much more precious resource as well.
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@NoNameToYou American honor. Some Americans tend to be ignorant of world events, so let me remind you of who "Taiwan" is. Going back to the 20th century, the Kuomintang ( KMT ), [I] also referred to as the Guomindang ( GMD ), [17] the Nationalist Party of China was our WW2 ally against Imperial Japan. After the war we cut off arms supplies to the battle-weary Nationalists while Stalin was supplying full support to Mao's communists. The Nationalists lost the civil war and were exiled to the island of Formosa or Taiwan. (This was our first betrayal, without it there probably would not have been a Korean or a Vietnam War.)
When Soviet supported North Korea invaded South Korea, precipitating the Korean War, the Republic of China (Taiwan), despite our recent betrayal, sent troops to support us along with our other allies. When Soviet supported North Vietnam invaded South Vietnam and we tried to do the same thing we had done in Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Korea, and Taiwan sent troops to support us while virtually ALL our NATO "allies", including the UK and Canada, stabbed us in the back diplomatically, condemning our efforts. In the midst of Taiwan's support the Nixon administration, wanting to take advantage of the political friction between the Chicoms and the Soviets after the death of Stalin and play mainland China against the USSR, transferred US diplomatic recognition from our ally to our enemy. (Second betrayal)
In the aftermath of our refusal to supply South Vietnam with the arms promised in the peace treaty ending the Vietnam War (Yes, children, we won the war before we lost it, North Korea never signed a peace treaty, North Vietnam DID - third betrayal), the North Vietnamese Army invaded the South with more Soviet tanks and planes than the US deployed against the Normandy beachhead in WW2. Then the purges began. The situation in Vietnam was so bad that Vietnamese were trying to escape the country by trying to TRAVERSE THE PACIFIC in anything that could float, however marginally. (web search "vietnam boat people")
Democratic reforms were implemented in the 1980s in Taiwan, and now Taiwan is a prosperous and thriving democracy. Taiwan is the world's main supplier of computer chips, a CAPITAL GOOD that undergirds our modern economy. The voters have indicated their desire to remain free. With respect to the "one China/two Chinas" issue, if our criterion is the "consent of the governed" then there is one China, the Republic of China (Taiwan). The mainland, the People's Republic of China is a renegade province. If our criterion is NOT the "consent of the governed", we owe King George an apology.
Now others have gone on at length to explain the economic national interest we have in Taiwan. I'm not an economist. I am a moralist. Taiwan has been an active, loyal, and steadfast ally of the US for 80 years, for all her political history. They were our allies when we didn't have many. "But the Chicoms have nukes!". Yea, they'll have more the next time, and the next. We won the Cold War with containment and readiness, not appeasement. Appeasement is surrender on the installment plan. Since when was betraying our allies a "conservative" position? Shame on you! As long as the Lord blesses us, we have an obligation to be a blessing.
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@seanbrown9048 Quote from Bulverism by C. S. Lewis:
You must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong. The modern method is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became so silly.
In the course of the last fifteen years I have found this vice so common that I have had to invent a name for it. I call it "Bulverism". Some day I am going to write the biography of its imaginary inventor, Ezekiel Bulver, whose destiny was determined at the age of five when he heard his mother say to his father — who had been maintaining that two sides of a triangle were together greater than a third — "Oh you say that because you are a man." "At that moment", E. Bulver assures us, "there flashed across my opening mind the great truth that refutation is no necessary part of argument. Assume that your opponent is wrong, and explain his error, and the world will be at your feet. Attempt to prove that he is wrong or (worse still) try to find out whether he is wrong or right, and the natural dynamism of our age will thrust you to the wall." That is how Bulver became one of the makers of the Twentieth Century.
Suppose I think, after doing my accounts, that I have a large balance at the bank. And suppose you want to find out whether this belief of mine is "wishful thinking." You can never come to any conclusion by examining my psychological condition. Your only chance of finding out is to sit down and work through the sum yourself. When you have checked my figures, then, and then only, will you know whether I have that balance or not. If you find my arithmetic correct, then no amount of vapouring about my psychological condition can be anything but a waste of time. If you find my arithmetic wrong, then it may be relevant to explain psychologically how I came to be so bad at my arithmetic, and the doctrine of the concealed wish will become relevant — but only after you have yourself done the sum and discovered me to be wrong on purely arithmetical grounds. It is the same with all thinking and all systems of thought. If you try to find out which are tainted by speculating about the wishes of the thinkers, you are merely making a fool of yourself. You must first find out on purely logical grounds which of them do, in fact, break down as arguments. Afterwards, if you like, go on and discover the psychological causes of the error.
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Of course not! Jews are not conspiring as a race to turn Europe into an Islamic bloc which will murder them and join in attacking Israel, and only an utter dolt would entertain the notion for a second. Many Jews have liked living in Europe and have built honest productive lives for generations, and now they are having to leave because of this crap. This is completely a leftist crime, and not all Jews are leftists and not all leftists are Jews. You try to taint every legitimate issue with your pet peeve but you never defend the connection, you just assert it and call people names. The notion that an ethnicity is a conspiracy is absurd.
And you contradict yourselves. You say that it is the Jewish religion that prompts Jews to hostility and domination plots toward gentiles and Christians and that Zionism is part of the plot, then when you list subversive Jews in places of power you list atheist Jews whose family has never darkened the door of a synagogue, sometimes for generations, and who are more hostile to Israel than you are. You say the Jews are to be blamed because they killed Christ, then you say modern Jews are not descendants of the Old and New Testament Jews. You deny the historical Holocaust by way of trying to improve the image of Nazis, then call for a holocaust. If a holocaust is bad, why are you calling for one? If it is not bad, why do you spend so much energy trying to deny the 20th century European one? Not only are each of your claims unsupported and absurd in isolation, they don't even fit together into a consistent lie.
The only effective lie the socialists have nowadays is accusing US of being YOU. If you did not exist, they could not win anything. They would have to invent you in order to have anything to say after their policies and ideology have been so totally discredited historically. You play into the leftist hands by diverting their blame to the wrong target.
In fact, every day in every way groypers support the same things the "cultural Marxists" support, from the centrality of "group identity" through the abolition of the civil rights enumerated in the Constitution (all of them, without exception) through segregation, to the opposition to the ideal/goal of limited government and freedom itself. This is how you know they are false flag leftists-BECAUSE ALL OF THE THINGS THEY ADVOCATE ARE LEFTIST THINGS.
Your man Spencer endorsed Biden/Harris in '20. Nick Fuentes tried to urge Georgia conservatives to stay home and not vote in the runoff elections that handed the Dems the effective majority in the Senate. You are pulling out all the stops to ensure that conservatives lose, you are doing this OPENLY, and you expect us NOT TO NOTICE? That is why you denigrate EVERY EFFECTIVE CONSERVATIVE VOICE, not just the Jewish ones. Fascist and Marxists (two flavors of socialism) have been playing this game since the 1920s: "If you're not one of us you're one of them". BS. Occasionally they fight each other but most of the time they cooperate against liberty.
We conservatives have some political power and a following. You racists have nothing. You will always have nothing. You will always accomplish nothing as you have accomplished nothing to this day. The only effective checks on the socialist agenda have been accomplished by us, with no help from you, because you are not on the side of freedom. "A difference that MAKES no difference IS no difference."
Both commies and Nazis will:
Divide the public and foster hate along class/religious/gender/class lines
Segregate
Central plan the economy
Nationalize the press
End freedom of speech
Confiscate weapons
Persecute all non state sponsored religions
End all civil rights, including the rights enumerated in the US Constitution (and the Magna Carta).
Evict innocent citizens from their homes
Mobilize the apparatus of law and tax enforcement against their political enemies
Slander, imprison, and murder their political enemies
Eliminate or absorb all public organizations
Replace commercial entertainment media with a boring stream of propaganda.
The minor, insignificant differences between communism and Nazism are only important to communists and Nazis, not to anybody who loves freedom. You won't distract us from our fight for freedom with your internal socialist squabble over who should be our master.
"He is in great fear, not knowing what mighty one may suddenly appear, wielding the Ring, and assailing him with war, seeking to cast him down and take his place. That we should wish to cast him down and have no one in his place is not a thought that occurs to his mind."-J.R.R. Tolkien, "Lord of the Rings"
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@don key shot "lest we forget"
???
To invoke the security interests of other countries is beside the point. The self-determination of the Ukrainians is the central issue. "Security interests" of one country is not a justification for invading another country which has not attacked you. That is the only principle on which a reasonable international order can be built. Who does Russia imagine is going to threaten them if they remain within the borders they have agreed to by treaty? There is no threat. Yea, by all means, lets forget that, because it is the most lame threadbare excuse in the human history of excuses.
Nobody wants to invade Russia from the west and seize eastern Russia. Russia simply has nothing west of the Urals worth stealing. Moving invasion and occupation forces west commits them further away from your most valuable asset, the undeveloped land and resources of Siberia, and your most dangerous, acquisitive and proximate threat: CHINA! Aside from that, Russia needs to get over their delusions of relevance. Sell oil, vodka, and caviar and mind your own business. You don't deserve international attention, and you DON'T WANT IT.
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@quango111
The US healthy enthusiasm for guns and gun ownership has served us well. While the US does rank somewhere in the 80s worldwide in per capita murders overall, which is high for a western country, the devil is in the details. Virtually all of these murders take place in certain Democrat dominated municipalities with strict gun control laws. Counties with the highest rate of gun ownership have the lowest crime rates.
In the UK it is becoming more common for thieves to invade British homes when they know the occupants are home. Instead of sneaking around at night, or mugging people in the streets, they break in and get the combined haul of a burglary and a mugging in one job. Naturally, in a nation where gun ownership for self defense by private citizens is prohibited, they can count on 3 young strong men with clubs or knives being able to overpower whatever is waiting for them inside. This does not happen in the US for good and sufficient reason. In this area and most, we're doing it right and Europe is doing it wrong.
(I had 5 links to articles in prominent British publications documenting my claims in my original post in my original post. YT wouldn't let me post that version. The way that that works is it looks like you've posted the reply, but when you reload the page, it's gone. I always check since I discovered this. Just think how many folk think they're replying to you, but you can't see their replies. It is easy to program a "black list" of links into the AI. Someday, I would love to see that list published, for educational purposes.)
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@Mhdfalah250 It is true that Hitler when he was a politician seeking office expressed certain pro-Christian statements. But in his private remarks to his officials he made it clear where he really stood as has been revealed by seized Nazi government documents and the notes of an author who planned to publish a collection of Hitler's remarks at the dinner table.
Dr Zoellner and [Catholic Bishop of Munster] Count Galen have tried to make clear to me that Christianity consists in faith in Christ as the son of God. That makes me laugh... No, Christianity is not dependent upon the Apostle's Creed... True Christianity is represented by the party, and the German people are now called by the party and especially the Fuehrer to a real Christianity... the Fuehrer is the herald of a new revelation."
— Hans Kerrl, Nazi Minister for Church Affairs, 1937
During the war Alfred Rosenberg formulated a thirty-point program for the National Reich Church, which included:
The National Reich Church claims exclusive right and control over all Churches.
The National Church is determined to exterminate foreign Christian faiths imported into Germany in the ill-omened year 800.
The National Church demands immediate cessation of the publishing and dissemination of the Bible.
The National Church will clear away from its altars all Crucifixes, Bibles, and pictures of Saints.
On the altars there must be nothing but "Mein Kampf" and to the left of the altar a sword.
Prior to the Reichstag vote for the Enabling Act under which Hitler gained legislative powers with which he went on to permanently dismantle the Weimar Republic, Hitler promised the Reichstag on 23 March 1933, that he would not interfere with the rights of the churches. However, with power secured in Germany, Hitler quickly broke this promise. Various historians have written that the goal of the Nazi Kirchenkampf (Church Struggle) entailed not only ideological struggle, but ultimately the eradication of the Churches. However, leading Nazis varied in the importance they attached to the Church Struggle.
William Shirer wrote that "under the leadership of Rosenberg, Bormann and Himmler, who were backed by Hitler, the Nazi regime intended to destroy Christianity in Germany, if it could, and substitute the old paganism of the early tribal Germanic gods and the new paganism of the Nazi extremists." During a speech on 27 October 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt revealed evidence of Hitler's plan to abolish all religions in Germany, declaring:
Your government has in its possession another document, made in Germany by Hitler’s Government… It is a plan to abolish all existing religions—Catholic, Protestant, Mohammedan, Hindu, Buddhist, and Jewish alike. The property of all churches will be seized by the Reich and its puppets. The cross and all other symbols of religion are to be forbidden. The clergy are to be forever liquidated, silenced under penalty of the concentration camps, where even now so many fearless men are being tortured because they have placed God above Hitler.
Hitler himself possessed radical instincts in relation to the continuing conflict with the Catholic and Protestant Churches in Germany. Though he occasionally spoke of wanting to delay the Church struggle and was prepared to restrain his anti-clericalism out of political considerations, his "own inflammatory comments gave his immediate underlings all the license they needed to turn up the heat in the 'Church Struggle, confident that they were 'working towards the Fuhrer'". According to the Goebbels Diaries, Hitler hated Christianity. In an 8 April 1941 entry, Goebbels wrote "He hates Christianity, because it has crippled all that is noble in humanity."
In Bullock's assessment, though raised a Catholic, Hitler "believed neither in God nor in conscience", retained some regard for the organizational power of Catholicism, but had contempt for its central teachings, which he said, if taken to their conclusion, "would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure". (Bullock wrote.)
In Hitler's eyes, Christianity was a religion fit only for slaves; he detested its ethics in particular. Its teaching, he declared, was a rebellion against the natural law of selection by struggle and the survival of the fittest.
— Extract from Hitler: A Study in Tyranny, by Alan Bullock
Writing for Yad Vashem, the historian Michael Phayer wrote that by the latter 1930s, church officials knew that the long-term aim of Hitler was the "total elimination of Catholicism and of the Christian religion", but that given the prominence of Christianity in Germany, this was necessarily a long-term goal. According to Bullock, Hitler intended to destroy the influence of the Christian churches in Germany after the war. In his memoirs, Hitler's chief architect Albert Speer recalled that when drafting his plans for the "new Berlin", he consulted Protestant and Catholic authorities, but was "curtly informed" by Hitler's private secretary Martin Bormann that churches were not to receive building sites. Kershaw wrote that, in Hitler's scheme for the Germanization of Eastern Europe, he made clear that there would be "no place in this utopia for the Christian Churches'.
Geoffrey Blainey wrote that Hitler and his Fascist ally Mussolini were atheists. "The aggressive spread of atheism in the Soviet Union alarmed many German Christians", wrote Blainey, and with the Nazis becoming the main opponent of Communism in Germany: "[Hitler] himself saw Christianity as a temporary ally, for in his opinion 'one is either a Christian or a German'. To be both was impossible. Nazism itself was a religion, a pagan religion, and Hitler was its high priest... Its high altar [was] Germany itself and the German people, their soil and forests and language and traditions". Nonetheless, a number of early confidants of Hitler detailed the Führer's complete lack of religious belief. One close confidant, Otto Strasser, disclosed in his 1940 book, Hitler and I, that Hitler was a true disbeliever, succinctly stating: "Hitler is an atheist."
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@jmo8525 "Israel and the Middle East in general has zero foundational, historical, economic, or national security interest to the U.S.."
There is not a scrap of truth to that statement. The geographic location of the Middle East, as well as the presence of oil, and oil financed and leftist financed jihad make the region important. Even if we are not totally dependent on Middle Eastern oil, many of our allies are. Remember, we are the "Great Satan" in the jihad pantheon. If ever they destroy Israel the US is next on the list.
But, anyway, this wasn't a policy argument. It was an argument about the relative merit of the Israeli and Palestinian causes. It is morally bankrupt to base your moral evaluation of others and endorse slander on the basis of personal interest. Perhaps foreign policy cannot be divorced from national interest, but it is rank hypocrisy and self delusion to pick your "facts" on that basis.
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@-Swamp_Donkey- "Oops, can’t mention Jews, banking, The Balfour Declaration, and WWI and expect your comment not to be removed."
Of course you can. You didn't expect to be removed. Why would the leftist establishment remove your comment? Everything you groypers do or say helps them. The notion that an ethnicity is a conspiracy is absurd. You Jew haters help the socialists because you play into their narrative. The only effective lie the socialists have nowadays is accusing US of being YOU. If you did not exist, they could not win anything. They would have to invent you in order to have anything to say after their policies and ideology have been so totally discredited historically.
In fact, every day in every way groypers support the same things the "cultural Marxists" support, from the centrality of "group identity" through the abolition of the civil rights enumerated in the Constitution (all of them, without exception) through segregation, to the opposition to the ideal/goal of limited government and freedom itself. This is how you know they are false flag leftists-BECAUSE ALL OF THE THINGS THEY ADVOCATE ARE LEFTIST THINGS.
Your man Spencer endorsed Biden/Harris in '20. Nick Fuentes tried to urge Georgia conservatives to stay home and not vote in the runoff elections that handed the Dems the effective majority in the Senate. You are pulling out all the stops to ensure that conservatives lose, you are doing this OPENLY, and you expect us NOT TO NOTICE? That is why you denigrate EVERY EFFECTIVE CONSERVATIVE VOICE, not just the Jewish ones. Fascist and Marxists (two flavors of socialism) have been playing this game since the 1920s: "If you're not one of us you're one of them". BS. Occasionally they fight each other but most of the time they cooperate against liberty.
We conservatives have some political power and a following. You racists have nothing. You will always have nothing. You will always accomplish nothing as you have accomplished nothing to this day. The only effective checks on the socialist agenda have been accomplished by us, with no help from you, because you are not on the side of freedom.
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We're the party of freedom and equality under the law, and have been throughout. We're on the freedom side of every issue, except harming children. The inner city needs to be liberated from a narrow orthodoxy and indoctrination of political outlook, solution: 1st amendment. The inner city needs to be liberated from organized crime, solution: 2nd amendment. The inner city needs to be liberated from an oppressive incompetent education system, solution: education choice. The incentives and opportunities for employment need to be enhanced, solution: entitlement reform, a low minimum wage, and enforcement of immigration laws. The inner city needs moral retrenchment, solution: Christianity and the Protestant work ethic. These are the solutions championed by the conservative wing of the Republican party, and they work wherever they are tried. Ask for us by name. And thank you for asking.
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@EdoardoB-xz1jp
"A difference that MAKES no difference IS no difference."
Both commies and Nazis will:
Divide the public and foster hate along class/religious/gender/class lines
Segregate
Central plan the economy
Nationalize the press
End freedom of speech
Confiscate weapons
Persecute all non state sponsored religions
End all civil rights, including the rights enumerated in the US Constitution (and the Magna Carta).
Evict innocent citizens from their homes
Mobilize the apparatus of law and tax enforcement against their political enemies
Slander, imprison, and murder their political enemies
Eliminate or absorb all public organizations
Replace commercial entertainment media with a boring stream of propaganda.
The minor, insignificant differences between communism and Nazism are only important to communists and Nazis, not to anybody who loves freedom. You won't distract us from our fight for freedom with your internal socialist squabble over who should be our master.
"He is in great fear, not knowing what mighty one may suddenly appear, wielding the Ring, and assailing him with war, seeking to cast him down and take his place. That we should wish to cast him down and have no one in his place is not a thought that occurs to his mind."-J.R.R. Tolkien, "Lord of the Rings"
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The Nova renaissance
What do you imagine the dates have to do with it? The "Cultural Revolution" was much worse, a prime candidate for the worst sustained atrocity the world has seen, and that happened right after the war.
" Am I wrong?"
You are irrational and partizan. You make statements about other people's motives you can't prove, as though this excuses you from considering facts. This is Bulverism.
Quote from Bulverism by C. S. Lewis:
You must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong. The modern method is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became so silly.
In the course of the last fifteen years I have found this vice so common that I have had to invent a name for it. I call it "Bulverism". Some day I am going to write the biography of its imaginary inventor, Ezekiel Bulver, whose destiny was determined at the age of five when he heard his mother say to his father — who had been maintaining that two sides of a triangle were together greater than a third — "Oh you say that because you are a man." "At that moment", E. Bulver assures us, "there flashed across my opening mind the great truth that refutation is no necessary part of argument. Assume that your opponent is wrong, and explain his error, and the world will be at your feet. Attempt to prove that he is wrong or (worse still) try to find out whether he is wrong or right, and the natural dynamism of our age will thrust you to the wall." That is how Bulver became one of the makers of the Twentieth Century.
Suppose I think, after doing my accounts, that I have a large balance at the bank. And suppose you want to find out whether this belief of mine is "wishful thinking." You can never come to any conclusion by examining my psychological condition. Your only chance of finding out is to sit down and work through the sum yourself. When you have checked my figures, then, and then only, will you know whether I have that balance or not. If you find my arithmetic correct, then no amount of vapouring about my psychological condition can be anything but a waste of time. If you find my arithmetic wrong, then it may be relevant to explain psychologically how I came to be so bad at my arithmetic, and the doctrine of the concealed wish will become relevant — but only after you have yourself done the sum and discovered me to be wrong on purely arithmetical grounds. It is the same with all thinking and all systems of thought. If you try to find out which are tainted by speculating about the wishes of the thinkers, you are merely making a fool of yourself. You must first find out on purely logical grounds which of them do, in fact, break down as arguments. Afterwards, if you like, go on and discover the psychological causes of the error.
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Didn't you hear him? His career options were limited by his opinions, not the other way around. You are ignoring the reality not only of his personal journey, but that of the whole status of academia, journalism, and media. There can be no "conservative sellouts" in the current market because by far all the money is on the other side. Besides, your attack is Bulverism. Rather than engage his arguments, you give yourself and your readers and excuse to dismiss them prior to consideration.
Quote from Bulverism by C. S. Lewis:
You must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong. The modern method is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became so silly.
In the course of the last fifteen years I have found this vice so common that I have had to invent a name for it. I call it "Bulverism". Some day I am going to write the biography of its imaginary inventor, Ezekiel Bulver, whose destiny was determined at the age of five when he heard his mother say to his father — who had been maintaining that two sides of a triangle were together greater than a third — "Oh you say that because you are a man." "At that moment", E. Bulver assures us, "there flashed across my opening mind the great truth that refutation is no necessary part of argument. Assume that your opponent is wrong, and explain his error, and the world will be at your feet. Attempt to prove that he is wrong or (worse still) try to find out whether he is wrong or right, and the natural dynamism of our age will thrust you to the wall." That is how Bulver became one of the makers of the Twentieth Century.
Suppose I think, after doing my accounts, that I have a large balance at the bank. And suppose you want to find out whether this belief of mine is "wishful thinking." You can never come to any conclusion by examining my psychological condition. Your only chance of finding out is to sit down and work through the sum yourself. When you have checked my figures, then, and then only, will you know whether I have that balance or not. If you find my arithmetic correct, then no amount of vapouring about my psychological condition can be anything but a waste of time. If you find my arithmetic wrong, then it may be relevant to explain psychologically how I came to be so bad at my arithmetic, and the doctrine of the concealed wish will become relevant — but only after you have yourself done the sum and discovered me to be wrong on purely arithmetical grounds. It is the same with all thinking and all systems of thought. If you try to find out which are tainted by speculating about the wishes of the thinkers, you are merely making a fool of yourself. You must first find out on purely logical grounds which of them do, in fact, break down as arguments. Afterwards, if you like, go on and discover the psychological causes of the error.
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@BearFlagRebel " Don't tell me anything different."
I will confront significant error when I find it. Conservative think tanks are not where the money is. If you think that conservative content is the path to easy money, you haven't the merest clue about the media landscape. Every conservative spokesman goes into the field knowing he could make many times more hawking the other side. The side underwritten by oodles of well connected billionaire donors. The side that never has to worry about demonitization, cancellation, censorship or subsidized industrial strength slander, harassing litigation, organized subsidized pre-pardoned harassment and outright naked violence, and political prosecution from a lockstep monolithic power bloc of the bureaucratic state, legacy and state sponsored media, the electronic gatekeepers, their shady cynical oligarchs, and their many dupes and henchmen.
It just irks the hell out of you that we work-stained Bob Cratchits in our deplorable masses can glean a ha'pence here, a tu'pence there and have the unmitigated gall to pool our penury and prayers; our blood, sweat, tears, and toil; our individually feeble voices and indomitable goodwill to collectively support a few brave and talented men and women to publish some genteel and diffident criticism against the most powerful corrupt political machine the world has known. "It's not FAIR", sobs the crybully in agony as he lays on the whip. "There ougta be a LAW!!" It never occurred to anyone in the history of mankind to speak the truth to power FOR MONEY, for good and sufficient reason. It's bad for business.
"that is very much part of mainstream academia and are ideological gatekeepers"
Show me an MSM report or article, a Hollywood movie, or an Ivy League college that presents Israel in a positive light. You can't.
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The Emancipation Proclamation freed every slave Lincoln had the authority to free. To free the rest required a Constitutional amendment. The Confederate statesmen and journalists of the time made it clear that the war was over slavery as far as they were concerned. The tariff was signed by Lincolns Democrat presidential predecessor and would have failed the congressional vote had not several states already seceded. Ironically, fearing the end of slavery the south brought it about and as a secondary issue (by their own lights) brought about the new tariff as well.
I grant you that Lincoln would not have started a war over slavery or a tariff either one. But he didn't start the war. The Confederacy started the war over slavery, and their own words insist on the fact. In the end Lincoln and the nation largely embraced emancipation as the meaning of the war as if the South had talked them into it "who, in the midst of peace and prosperity, have plunged a nation into war, dark and cruel war; who dared and badgered us to battle, insulted our flag, seized our arsenals and forts that were left in the honorable custody of peaceful ordnance sergeants; seized and made 'prisoners of war' the very garrisons sent to protect your people against negroes and Indians long before any overt act was committed by the, to you, hated Lincoln Government….[You] turned loose your privateers to plunder unarmed ships; expelled Union families by the thousands; burned their houses and declared by an act of your Congress the confiscation of all debts due Northern men for goods had and received." (Quoting a letter from Sherman) "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" is clear enough, and it was written during the war and sung by the Union troops, thus not a historical revision after the fact, notwithstanding that Lincoln seems to have had a religious conversion from agnosticism to Christianity during the war.
It could be argued that the presence of federal troops on federal land claimed by the Confederacy was an act of war. But an act of war isn't war, it's a legalized justification for war. The act and policy of pursuing national goals by the battery of deadly force is war. Beauregard started the war, with the approval of the planter oligarchs who were driving the events all along. The same folks who engineered the Dred Scott ruling, which "evinces a design" to make every state a slave state. Having themselves appealed to that penultimate court, they must abide the verdict.
The pre-Lincoln Democrat secretary of war diverted supplies to southern garrisons which were seized by the rebels. The Confederacy, out of all its vast territory and many cities, chose Richmond for its capitol, in order to have an excuse to amass an army at the border of the District of Columbia, more than ten times closer to Washington than to Richmond. To this point, Lincoln had still held out hope of a peaceful resolution to the dispute, but leaving a hostile army camped by your jugular vein is not a stable or survivable situation. In response to the threat, Lincoln called for volunteers. It was always the plan of the oligarchs to dictate terms to the Union at the point of a sword. They thought that they could do this because they thought the martial qualities of their "Norman" blood and the greater horsemanship of the southern cavaliers would defeat the "Saxon" shopkeepers of the North. We know they thought this last part because they said it in southern newspapers. It was true enough that Southerners as a group had more skill with guns and blades and horses. The south was more rural with more hunting, fewer and inferior roads and railroads, and a cultural penchant for settling disputes with violence. This contrast of lifestyle was particularly true comparing with the northeast. The northwest was about as rural and undeveloped, if not quite as violent. The south had already been warming to the notion of settling the slavery question by force with pre-war events in Missouri and Kansas. To use Lincoln's phrase "an appeal from ballots to bullets".
In the northeast, with a larger middle class and better infrastructure, much of the population was accustomed to getting around in wagons, steamboats, or trains. In fact, the Union had a hard time mustering cavalry. It wasn't until about Gettysburg that the Army of the Potomac had about as many cavalry troopers as the Army of Northern Virginia. Cavalry did not at this time have its traditional "shock" value in attack as many were slow to realize (except in some small engagements). Cavalry's remaining role was in raiding, pursuit of routed troops, and, above all, tactical reconnaissance. One of the reasons JEB Stuart was having such a field day at the start of the war was that his cavalry outnumbered his enemies'. Until about Gettysburg, the Union army was getting much of its recon from Pinkerton spies, who typically reported Confederate numbers as twice as great as fact. That was also the reason Stuart failed at Gettysburg. He was in enemy territory facing experienced cavalry in equal numbers. But I digress.
Don't get me wrong, I do not subscribe to the radical blanket contempt some leftists adopt to the south, or even the wartime south. I have some respect and sympathy for the Confederate soldier, particularly the rank-and-file, often ignorant and easily manipulated by their educated, influential and powerful politicians and the South's much more stratified social and economic structure. For the officers, my opinion varies on an individual basis. Longstreet deserves respect, if only for his tireless efforts at reconciliation after the war. Nathan B. Forrest ought to have been hung for the Centralia massacre, and is culpable for his part in the formation and operation of the KKK after the war. Most of the rest of the officers fall somewhere between these extremes in the moral scale. Stonewall Jackson was a bit of a kook, but a pious one. For the politicians and power brokers in the south who destroyed their own states and thousands of lives unjustly and irrationally in an ineptly and unjustly conceived attempt to defend their wealth and corruption, notably but not exclusively Jefferson Davis and Beauregard, there is room for nothing but contempt, and any southerner with perspective and self respect shares that contempt. The "Knights of the Cause" were a mixed and colorful bag with many good qualities distributed among them, but the "cause" itself was execrable.
Ultimately, and charm notwithstanding, the best Confederate was a dupe of evil and calculating men. One of the exhausted and half-starved soldiers of the Army of Northern Virginia after the surrender at Appomattox was heard to say "I'll never love a country again." It makes you want to weep, humanity steamrollered once again by human nature and the human condition exacerbated by the machinations and deceits of the great Enemy. "Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus."
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Note that it's we Christians who are pushing back on the Muslims. If the UK is saved from Islam it won't be the agnostics and atheists that save it. And what do you propose as an alternative? Atheism? As foundation for a society that has a singularly abysmal track record. From the Jacobin Reign of Terror in the French Revolution, through the Soviet Union, the Third Reich, Communist China, and the Pol Pot regime; the result of a society based on atheism has invariably been bloodbath after bloodbath. The USSR alone murdered more of its own civilians than have ever been killed in all the inquisitions, pogroms, and purely religious wars in recorded history, and they only lasted: what? 80 or so years?
Protestantism created the modern libertarian west. We (Protestants) ended slavery; implemented religious freedom, political freedom, academic freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press FIRST, and thus caused the academic, scientific, technological, and material progress that followed; and most of the rest of the world hasn't caught up with it yet. John 8:32 "You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” You like freedom? That was us. You're welcome.
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As for injunctions to violence toward kaffir, apostates, and hypocrites, pretty much throughout:
Koran 2:191-193
2:216
3:151
4:76
4:89
4:95 Not equal are those of the believers who sit (at home), except those who are disabled (by injury or are blind or lame, etc.), and those who strive hard and fight in the Cause of Allah with their wealth and their lives. Allah has preferred in grades those who strive hard and fight with their wealth and their lives above those who sit (at home).Unto each, Allah has promised good (Paradise), but Allah has preferred those who strive hard and fight, above those who sit (at home) by a huge reward " This passage criticizes "peaceful" Muslims who do not join in the violence, letting them know that they are less worthy in Allah's eyes. It also demolishes the modern myth that "Jihad" doesn't mean holy war in the Quran, but rather a spiritual struggle. Not only is this Arabic word (mujahiduna) used in this passage, but it is clearly not referring to anything spiritual, since the physically disabled are given exemption. (The Hadith reveals the context of the passage to be in response to a blind man's protest that he is unable to engage in Jihad, which would not make sense if it meant an internal struggle)
This is one of the references of the "fighting with money" escape clauses for the rich which I referenced in my earlier post.
4:104
8:12
8:39
8:67
8:59-60
9:5
9:14
9:20 Those who believe, and have left their homes and striven with their wealth and their lives in Allah's way are of much greater worth in Allah's sight. These are they who are triumphant." The Arabic word interpreted as "striving" in this verse is the same root as "Jihad". The context is obviously holy war.
9:29
9:38-39
9:41
9:73
9:88
9:111
9:123
33:60-62
47:3-4
47:35
48:17
48:29
61:4
66:9
Sahih Bukhari 52:117
52:220
52:256
Abu Dawud 14:2526, 2527
And many more. If you read through a translation that did not give you an impression that Islam endorses violence in general against unbelievers in general, then yes, it was a bad translation.
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@elephantoflight3362 "What parent has a degree and experience in education?"
As though a degree conveys authority and motive. The parents hire teachers to perform a service for them. I may take a plumber's advice on how to fix my flooded basement. I won't take his advice on WHETHER my basement is flooded, still less on whether it should be. The actions a workman takes in my house are under my authority and he is answerable to me by right and under the law for them. This was the case even when an education degree was about making one expert in educating, rather than indoctrination, which is now the case. The FIRST place the neo-marxist "long march through the institutions" took over was the teacher's college. Nowadays a teaching degree is the diametric opposite of a qualification or recommendation for a position of responsibility in free republic.
And make no mistake, our body politic established a republic, not a technocracy. Experts can play a subordinate role in administering society, but they answer to the public. Generals may be military experts, but they aren't allow to do with the army as they please. That is not how our checks and balances work and for good and sufficient reason. There is nothing in a body of knowledge, nothing in science for a scientist, nothing in medicine for a doctor, that would keep them from self-serving and doing evil.
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@evolassunglasses4673 lsrael has hundreds of thousands of citizens who are not of Jewish descent. How does TR plant to transform lsrael into an ethnostate? If you are going to refuse to work with anyone who doesn't favor the genocide of Js in lsrael you are not going to be of much use in trying to save Britain for the British people and British traditions, because there aren't that many of you accursed fools. You strengthen the left and empower them by strengthening their narrative that anyone who opposes their agenda is a racist like yourself. Get this through your head. Racism is not popular, and it NEVER WILL BE POPULAR.
If you want to restore Britain, support Reform, Tommy Robinson, and keep that J-- bashing to yourself until we win, then spout off as you like. If you want to support the devolution of the UK and the West, keep on as you're doing. There is not a thing you could do in this world that could help the leftists and jihadis more than exactly what you're doing now, serving as a cat's paw for the left regardless of your intentions.
Fascist and Marxists (two flavors of socialism) have been playing this game since the 1920s: "If you're not one of us you're one of them". Bollocks. Almost everyone is neither of you, certainly everyone worthwhile. Occasionally they fight each other but most of the time they cooperate against liberty. You racists have nothing. You will always have nothing. You will always accomplish nothing as you have accomplished nothing to this day. The only effective checks on the socialist agenda have been accomplished by us, with no help from you, because you are not on the side of freedom.
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@yarpenzigrin1893 Of course not! Jews are not conspiring as a race to turn Europe into an Islamic bloc which will murder them and join in attacking Israel, and only an utter dolt would entertain the notion for a second. Many Jews have liked living in Europe and have built honest productive lives for generations, and now they are having to leave because of this crap. This is completely a leftist crime, and not all Jews are leftists. You try to taint every legitimate issue with your pet peeve but you never defend the connection, you just assert it and call people names. The notion that an ethnicity is a conspiracy is absurd.
And you contradict yourselves. You say that it is the Jewish religion that prompts Jews to hostility and domination plots toward gentiles and Christians and that Zionism is part of the plot, then when you list subversive Jews in places of power you list atheist Jews whose family has never darkened the door of a synagogue, sometimes for generations, and who are more hostile to Israel than you are. You say the Jews are to be blamed because they killed Christ, then you say modern Jews are not descendants of the Old and New Testament Jews. You deny the historical Holocaust by way of trying to improve the image of Nazis, then call for a holocaust. If a holocaust is bad, why are you calling for one? If it is not bad, why do you spend so much energy trying to deny the 20th century European one? Not only are each of your claims unsupported and absurd in isolation, they don't even fit together into a consistent lie.
The only effective lie the socialists have nowadays is accusing US of being YOU. If you did not exist, they could not win anything. They would have to invent you in order to have anything to say after their policies and ideology have been so totally discredited historically.
In fact, every day in every way groypers support the same things the "cultural Marxists" support, from the centrality of "group identity" through the abolition of the civil rights enumerated in the Constitution (all of them, without exception) through segregation, to the opposition to the ideal/goal of limited government and freedom itself. This is how you know they are false flag leftists-BECAUSE ALL OF THE THINGS THEY ADVOCATE ARE LEFTIST THINGS.
Your man Spencer endorsed Biden/Harris in '20. Nick Fuentes tried to urge Georgia conservatives to stay home and not vote in the runoff elections that handed the Dems the effective majority in the Senate. You are pulling out all the stops to ensure that conservatives lose, you are doing this OPENLY, and you expect us NOT TO NOTICE? That is why you denigrate EVERY EFFECTIVE CONSERVATIVE VOICE, not just the Jewish ones. Fascist and Marxists (two flavors of socialism) have been playing this game since the 1920s: "If you're not one of us you're one of them". BS. Occasionally they fight each other but most of the time they cooperate against liberty.
We conservatives have some political power and a following. You racists have nothing. You will always have nothing. You will always accomplish nothing as you have accomplished nothing to this day. The only effective checks on the socialist agenda have been accomplished by us, with no help from you, because you are not on the side of freedom. "A difference that MAKES no difference IS no difference."
Both commies and Nazis will:
Divide the public and foster hate along class/religious/gender/class lines
Segregate
Central plan the economy
Nationalize the press
End freedom of speech
Confiscate weapons
Persecute all non state sponsored religions
End all civil rights, including the rights enumerated in the US Constitution (and the Magna Carta).
Evict innocent citizens from their homes
Mobilize the apparatus of law and tax enforcement against their political enemies
Slander, imprison, and murder their political enemies
Eliminate or absorb all public organizations
Replace commercial entertainment media with a boring stream of propaganda.
The minor, insignificant differences between communism and Nazism are only important to communists and Nazis, not to anybody who loves freedom. You won't distract us from our fight for freedom with your internal socialist squabble over who should be our master.
"He is in great fear, not knowing what mighty one may suddenly appear, wielding the Ring, and assailing him with war, seeking to cast him down and take his place. That we should wish to cast him down and have no one in his place is not a thought that occurs to his mind."-J.R.R. Tolkien, "Lord of the Rings"
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@brianshea4177 From the apostles' doctrine and the teachings of Christ in the Bible. The "Holy See" sure wasn't practicing or preaching them. More than a thousand years with discourse limited by deadly force, and there was nothing like freedom of religion until Protestantism was driving the political discourse. Protestantism created the modern libertarian west. We (Protestants) ended slavery; implemented religious freedom, political freedom, academic freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press FIRST, and thus caused the academic, scientific, technological, and material progress that followed; and most of the rest of the world hasn't caught up with it yet. John 8:32 "You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” The RCC legacy hinders apologetics and evangelism, because the first thing we are called on to do is DEFEND the inquisition and all that burning at the stake, even though it was OUR spiritual ancestors UNDER the screws and not TURNING them.
How recently did the IRA bomb somebody to force Northern Ireland against its freely voted will to join Catholic Ireland? How many years after the US Constitution until any Catholic country granted freedom of religion? If you've got it at all (and I'm not sure you have as a group), you got it from us. Even Catholic "conservatives" (such as the Catholic caucus in the Daily Wire (Matt Walsh and Micheal Knowles), flirt with "enforcing" Christian behavior beyond protecting people from force or fraud.
Why? Where do YOU think?
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"reminds me of the olden days, cruel as genghis khan, the crusaders, and oh, Hitler the irony of becoming the oppressor after being the oppressed"
Yet somehow your reminding forgets that Islam conquered, butchered and enslaved to acquire all these lands in the first place. If the Crusades hadn't struck back, the darkness, ignorance, wickedness, oppression, and backwardness that is Islam would have choked all of Europe, Asia, and Africa. It's not like Muslims happened to be oppressors. Islam IS OPPRESSION. There is no freedom at all in the Islamic world, no rights, no democracy, no equality, no freedom of religion. Women are mutilated tarp covered chattel. Children with outrageous regularity are brides, or simply sex slaves. For centuries their pirates with the sponsorship and open approval of their governments marauded, pillaged and enslaved the seas and coastlines of the Mediterranean, Africa, and the eastern Atlantic until Christendom finally defeated their pirates and shut down their slave markets.
I don't know what point you think you're making by mentioning Hitler, Islam's ally, or Genghis Kahn, even more Islam's prosecutor than her persecutor in his own words: "O people, know that you have committed great sins, and that the great ones among you have committed these sins. If you ask me what proof I have for these words, I say it is because I am the punishment of God. If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you."
The very Koran and Hadith enjoin them to violence and oppression, the early verses of tolerance (when Islam was weak) being abrogated by later injunctions to the contrary demanding the conquest and suppression of other religions and atheists alike. For passages where one becomes a martyr by killing people, we have:
Koran 4:74 "Let those fight in the way of Allah who sell the life of this world for the other. Whoso fighteth in the way of Allah, be he slain or be he victorious, on him We shall bestow a vast reward." The martyrs of Islam are unlike the early Christians, who were led meekly to the slaughter. These Muslims are killed in battle as they attempt to inflict death and destruction for the cause of Allah. This is the theological basis for today's suicide bombers. The word martyr is not used in this passage, but a death richly rewarded by God is pretty much the definition of martyrdom.
Similarly,
Sahih Bukhari 55:44 A man came to Allah's Apostle and said, "Instruct me as to such a deed as equals Jihad (in reward)." He replied, "I do not find such a deed."
As for injunctions to violence toward kaffir, apostates, and hypocrites, pretty much throughout:
Koran 2:191-193
2:216
3:151
4:76
4:89
4:95 "Not equal are those of the believers who sit (at home), except those who are disabled (by injury or are blind or lame, etc.), and those who strive hard and fight in the Cause of Allah with their wealth and their lives. Allah has preferred in grades those who strive hard and fight with their wealth and their lives above those who sit (at home).Unto each, Allah has promised good (Paradise), but Allah has preferred those who strive hard and fight, above those who sit (at home) by a huge reward " This passage criticizes "peaceful" Muslims who do not join in the violence, letting them know that they are less worthy in Allah's eyes. It also demolishes the modern myth that "Jihad" doesn't mean holy war in the Quran, but rather a spiritual struggle. Not only is this Arabic word (mujahiduna) used in this passage, but it is clearly not referring to anything spiritual, since the physically disabled are given exemption. (The Hadith reveals the context of the passage to be in response to a blind man's protest that he is unable to engage in Jihad, which would not make sense if it meant an internal struggle)
This is one of the references of the "fighting with money" escape clauses for the rich.
4:104
8:12
8:39
8:67
8:59-60
9:5
9:14
9:20 "Those who believe, and have left their homes and striven with their wealth and their lives in Allah's way are of much greater worth in Allah's sight. These are they who are triumphant." The Arabic word interpreted as "striving" in this verse is the same root as "Jihad". The context is obviously holy war.
9:29
9:38-39
9:41
9:73
9:88
9:111
9:123
33:60-62
47:3-4
47:35
48:17
48:29
61:4
66:9
Sahih Bukhari 52:117
52:220
52:256
Abu Dawud 14:2526, 2527
And many more.
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@AlphaOmega1025 "maybe you should learn history about the khazarians,"
That crap isn't history, its some part of an insane libel by Jew haters. "Yea, sure guys I have this idea. Lets pretend to be Jews in late Roman Europe and the middle-east so we can be persecuted instead of converting to Christianity, so we can become a part of mainstream Roman and Byzantine society. I don't foresee any problems with this plan." What possible MOTIVE could anyone have had to do that? "I have this plan to subvert the world and take over. Step one is to join a persecuted minority." NOT.
"international banking cartel"
I'll bend over backwards in your favor on this one and simply grant, for the sake of argument, that at the center of the international banking system is an oppressive conspiracy. That doesn't take you where you want to go with this. Certainly not all international bankers are Jews. Certainly not all Jews are international bankers. There are certainly many conspiring to undermine our freedom and steal our stuff for fun and profit. Some of them are even Jews. None of them are Zionists.
A fundamental absurdity of Jew haters, after the absurdity of calling an ethnicity a conspiracy is equating anti-Zionist leftist political organizations, George Soros, SPLC, ACLU, BLM, Antifa with Zionists and Israel that all these groups are doing their best to destroy. The "party line" of these morons is that that is all a cover and that they are all on the same side. And the only argument they have to support their party line is "They are all run by Jews", in other words, they have no argument at all. The most cursory investigation of the Israel policies of these organizations shows that they have the SAME Israel policy as the "Jews are destroying the world" conspiracy theorists. In fact, every day in every way the "racist right" supports the same things the "cultural Marxists" support, from the centrality of "group identity" through the abolition of the civil rights enumerated in the Constitution (all of them, without exception) through segregation, to the ideal/goal of limited government and freedom itself.
You groypers contradict yourself. You say that it is the Jewish religion that prompts Jews to hostility and domination plots toward gentiles and Christians and that Zionism is part of the plot, then when you list subversive Jews in places of power you list atheist Jews whose family has never darkened the door of a synagogue, sometimes for generations, and who are more hostile to Israel than you are. You say the Jews are to be blamed because they killed Christ, then you say modern Jews are not descendants of the Old and New Testament Jews. You deny the historical holocaust by way of trying to improve the image of Nazis, then call for a holocaust. If a holocaust is bad, why are you calling for one? If it is not bad, why do you spend so much energy trying to deny the 20th century European one? Not only are each of your claims unsupported and absurd in isolation, they don't even fit together into a consistent lie.
"the USS liberty"
You contrive to characterize all of US/Israel relations of a single friendly fire incident many decades ago. Do you have any notion of how often such a thing happens in every major military confrontation?
"look into who owned the trade towers and conveniently wasn’t there on 9/11"
I don't know what would be the point of that. It is perfectly legal to own a building and not live in it. It is even legal to leave one's home. Convenient things happen every day. Insurance or no, destroying ones own building is not generally a power move. Does thinking like that hurt your head?
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"JOKES DO NOT HELP"
Unsupported assertions in all caps don't constitute evidence. You need an argument, statistics, focus groups, something. Before you can influence anyone at all, you must get their ear. If you were right about how to reach people and they were wrong, then you would have a million subscribers and they would have 4. Envy is the Devil's cocaine.
"tell me a joke CHRIST told."
Have you even READ the Gospels? I can think of 2 off the top of my head:
"And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?" "Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?" "Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye."
The hyperbole wasn't necessary to make the point, and the image was elaborately absurd, and obviously chosen for its absurdity. The Lord was using humor and (in the Greek) alliterations and word play to help the teaching stick in the hearers' minds.
"Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel."
I am sure the crowd laughed at that one (except for the scribes and Pharisees who were the butt of the joke). Derisive humor is always funnier when it challenges the oppressive power. The sort of joke that can get you cancelled, or jailed, or killed. Because that is what God made derisive humor FOR. Remember Elijah before the prophets of Baal?
"Because it IS hat serious."
Hat serious, eh? Yes, Jesus and the Bee are serious in a way that you are not. A serious man is one whom others take seriously, not one who takes HIMSELF seriously. And apart from that, there is a fundamental fallacy in your argument. You seem to claim that we can never serve Jesus by doing something He didn't do. Did Jesus ever post videos and comments on YouTube?
I Corinthians 9:19-22
"For though I be free from all men, yet have I made myself servant unto all, that I might gain the more. And unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews; to them that are under the law, as under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law; To them that are without law, as without law, (being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ,) that I might gain them that are without law. To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak: I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some."
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The Republican party, is, and has been in an uninterrupted continuum from its inception, the party of freedom and equality under the law. We're on the freedom side of every issue except harming children. The inner city needs to be liberated from a narrow orthodoxy and indoctrination of political outlook, solution: 1st amendment. The inner city needs to be liberated from organized crime, solution: 2nd amendment. The inner city needs to be liberated from an oppressive incompetent education system, solution: education choice. The incentives and opportunities for employment need to be enhanced, solution: entitlement reform, a low minimum wage, and enforcement of immigration laws. The inner city needs moral retrenchment, solution: Christianity and the Protestant work ethic. These are the solutions championed by the conservative wing of the Republican party, and they work wherever they are tried. Ask for us by name.
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@alviverdeus "Private jet purchases are fully tax deductible, new car purchases are not."
This is a lie. Business expenses are deductible, so is personal itemizable transportation expense. People who don't itemize can't deduct the amortization as such, but in theory it's included in the standard deduction.
"Mortgage interest and property taxes from home ownership are tax deductible, rent payments are not. "
Same lie. If you itemize you can deduct housing expenses, including rent.
" earned income counts against your benefits, passive income from investments does not."
"Realized" income from capitol gains counts (beyond a certain point) against benefits and as income on taxes. You want a system where the appreciation on an assets gets taxed, but you don't get reimbursed if it loses value. Deducting for losses only helps if you get income from elsewhere in the same year, and in the current system only "realized" loss, that is, you must have sold the asset for less than you bought it for.
"The established mousetrap industry will either try to buy you, and if that fails, then ruin you."
So, you're AGAINST the attempts of established social media, aerospace companies, auto makers, in collusion with the bureaucracy to sink Elon Musk? The solution is to downsize government. The robber barons of yesteryear and today defend their monopolies by leveraging government against the competition. Disarm them.
There is a strong temptation to pretend that humans are naturally good, and that the problems of the human condition are the result of some social construct, because we don't want to face the truth about ourselves. To the communist free markets; to the anarchist government; to the New Atheists religion, to primitivists agriculture or technology, to racists whites or blacks or Jews or whoever; is the root of all evil. As the song says, "You can run from yourself, but you won't get far. 'Cause wherever you go --- There you are." This is the starting point of clarity in history, sociology, and psychiatry; every study which pertains to the nature of humanity. In fact, the same flawed, imperfect, selfish, stupid nature that infests the lord, or the "capitalist", infests the politician and bureaucrat. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The "capitalist" AS SUCH, can only hire or bribe. A government can do that (with other people's money), plus arrest and kill you or your family. It is incoherent to fear the former and not fear the latter. No "angel" is available to bear this power benignly. Government is "a dangerous servant and a fearful master".
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@markstanding8538 A common fallacy of utopian ideologues is that human nature is inherently good, but is being held back by some flaw in the social contract. In fact, the same flawed, imperfect, selfish, stupid nature that infests the lord, or the "capitalist", infests the revolutionary. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The "capitalist" AS SUCH, can only hire or bribe. An unchecked authoritarian government can do that (with other people's money), plus arrest, torture, and kill you or your family. It is incoherent to fear the former and not fear the latter. No "angel" is available to bear this power benignly.
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same lies they about the Irish, and Jews when they came here @angelajones3450
"trump cares nothing about immigration...hes doing this cause Russia and China paid him to do it to divide America."
All of the detrimental effects of the unchecked illegal influx of foreigners, the minority unemployment, the distortion of the electorate, increased violent crime, financial strain on government at all levels; weaken the US and serve the strategic hegemonic interests of China and Russia, and they both know it. If Trump were their "Manchurian Candidate", he would have the opposite view of "immigration" issues, of course. Having a voice against illegal immigration is having a voice against the destruction of the country. Our enemies would rather us go united over the cliff than that there be any voices calling us back from the brink.
"same lies they about the Irish, and Jews when they came here" [sic]
Well, the Democrats had some bad things to say about the Jews, to be sure, but they were criticizing LEGAL immigration, not ILLEGAL so it's not the same thing. The first is racist, the second is not.
"don't say there is no proof"
There is no proof that Trump colluded with the Russians to influence the elections, and if there were 26 months of investigation would have uncovered it and Trump would be out. (And you know it)
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@admirosmani3765 "which parts of the quran is hateful and violent?"
For specifically that a Muslim becomes a martyr by dying in a war, we have:
Koran 4:74 "Let those fight in the way of Allah who sell the life of this world for the other. Whoso fighteth in the way of Allah, be he slain or be he victorious, on him We shall bestow a vast reward." The martyrs of Islam are unlike the early Christians, who were led meekly to the slaughter. These Muslims are killed in battle as they attempt to inflict death and destruction for the cause of Allah. This is the theological basis for today's suicide bombers. The word martyr is not used in this passage, but a death richly rewarded by God is pretty much the definition of martyrdom.
Similarly,
Sahih Bukhari 55:44 A man came to Allah's Apostle and said, "Instruct me as to such a deed as equals Jihad (in reward)." He replied, "I do not find such a deed."
As for injunctions to violence toward kaffir, apostates, and hypocrites, pretty much throughout:
Koran 2:191-193
2:216
3:151
4:76
4:89
4:95 Not equal are those of the believers who sit (at home), except those who are disabled (by injury or are blind or lame, etc.), and those who strive hard and fight in the Cause of Allah with their wealth and their lives. Allah has preferred in grades those who strive hard and fight with their wealth and their lives above those who sit (at home).Unto each, Allah has promised good (Paradise), but Allah has preferred those who strive hard and fight, above those who sit (at home) by a huge reward " This passage criticizes "peaceful" Muslims who do not join in the violence, letting them know that they are less worthy in Allah's eyes. It also demolishes the modern myth that "Jihad" doesn't mean holy war in the Quran, but rather a spiritual struggle. Not only is this Arabic word (mujahiduna) used in this passage, but it is clearly not referring to anything spiritual, since the physically disabled are given exemption. (The Hadith reveals the context of the passage to be in response to a blind man's protest that he is unable to engage in Jihad, which would not make sense if it meant an internal struggle)
This is one of the references of the "fighting with money" escape clauses for the rich which I referenced in my earlier post.
4:104
8:12
8:39
8:67
8:59-60
9:5
9:14
9:20 Those who believe, and have left their homes and striven with their wealth and their lives in Allah's way are of much greater worth in Allah's sight. These are they who are triumphant." The Arabic word interpreted as "striving" in this verse is the same root as "Jihad". The context is obviously holy war.
9:29
9:38-39
9:41
9:73
9:88
9:111
9:123
33:60-62
47:3-4
47:35
48:17
48:29
61:4
66:9
Sahih Bukhari 52:117
52:220
52:256
Abu Dawud 14:2526, 2527
And many more. If you read through a translation that did not give you an impression that Islam endorses violence in general against unbelievers in general, then yes, it was a bad translation.
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Actually, that was a German motto long predating the Nazi regime. The actual Nazi policy toward religion in general, and Christianity in particular was irreconcilably hostile. It is true that Hitler when he was a politician seeking office expressed certain pro-Christian statements. But in his private remarks to his officials he made it clear where he really stood as has been revealed by seized Nazi government documents and the notes of an author who planned to publish a collection of Hitler's remarks at the dinner table.
Dr Zoellner and [Catholic Bishop of Munster] Count Galen have tried to make clear to me that Christianity consists in faith in Christ as the son of God. That makes me laugh... No, Christianity is not dependent upon the Apostle's Creed... True Christianity is represented by the party, and the German people are now called by the party and especially the Fuehrer to a real Christianity... the Fuehrer is the herald of a new revelation."
— Hans Kerrl, Nazi Minister for Church Affairs, 1937
During the war Alfred Rosenberg formulated a thirty-point program for the National Reich Church, which included:
The National Reich Church claims exclusive right and control over all Churches.
The National Church is determined to exterminate foreign Christian faiths imported into Germany in the ill-omened year 800.
The National Church demands immediate cessation of the publishing and dissemination of the Bible.
The National Church will clear away from its altars all Crucifixes, Bibles, and pictures of Saints.
On the altars there must be nothing but "Mein Kampf" and to the left of the altar a sword.
Prior to the Reichstag vote for the Enabling Act under which Hitler gained legislative powers with which he went on to permanently dismantle the Weimar Republic, Hitler promised the Reichstag on 23 March 1933, that he would not interfere with the rights of the churches. However, with power secured in Germany, Hitler quickly broke this promise. Various historians have written that the goal of the Nazi Kirchenkampf (Church Struggle) entailed not only ideological struggle, but ultimately the eradication of the Churches. However, leading Nazis varied in the importance they attached to the Church Struggle.
William Shirer wrote that "under the leadership of Rosenberg, Bormann and Himmler, who were backed by Hitler, the Nazi regime intended to destroy Christianity in Germany, if it could, and substitute the old paganism of the early tribal Germanic gods and the new paganism of the Nazi extremists." During a speech on 27 October 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt revealed evidence of Hitler's plan to abolish all religions in Germany, declaring:
"Your government has in its possession another document, made in Germany by Hitler’s Government… It is a plan to abolish all existing religions—Catholic, Protestant, Mohammedan, Hindu, Buddhist, and Jewish alike. The property of all churches will be seized by the Reich and its puppets. The cross and all other symbols of religion are to be forbidden. The clergy are to be forever liquidated, silenced under penalty of the concentration camps, where even now so many fearless men are being tortured because they have placed God above Hitler."
Hitler himself possessed radical instincts in relation to the continuing conflict with the Catholic and Protestant Churches in Germany. Though he occasionally spoke of wanting to delay the Church struggle and was prepared to restrain his anti-clericalism out of political considerations, his "own inflammatory comments gave his immediate underlings all the license they needed to turn up the heat in the 'Church Struggle, confident that they were 'working towards the Fuhrer'". According to the Goebbels Diaries, Hitler hated Christianity. In an 8 April 1941 entry, Goebbels wrote "He hates Christianity, because it has crippled all that is noble in humanity."
In Bullock's assessment, though raised a Catholic, Hitler "believed neither in God nor in conscience", retained some regard for the organizational power of Catholicism, but had contempt for its central teachings, which he said, if taken to their conclusion, "would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure". (Bullock wrote.)
In Hitler's eyes, Christianity was a religion fit only for slaves; he detested its ethics in particular. Its teaching, he declared, was a rebellion against the natural law of selection by struggle and the survival of the fittest.
— Extract from Hitler: A Study in Tyranny, by Alan Bullock
Writing for Yad Vashem, the historian Michael Phayer wrote that by the latter 1930s, church officials knew that the long-term aim of Hitler was the "total elimination of Catholicism and of the Christian religion", but that given the prominence of Christianity in Germany, this was necessarily a long-term goal. According to Bullock, Hitler intended to destroy the influence of the Christian churches in Germany after the war. In his memoirs, Hitler's chief architect Albert Speer recalled that when drafting his plans for the "new Berlin", he consulted Protestant and Catholic authorities, but was "curtly informed" by Hitler's private secretary Martin Bormann that churches were not to receive building sites. Kershaw wrote that, in Hitler's scheme for the Germanization of Eastern Europe, he made clear that there would be "no place in this utopia for the Christian Churches'.
Geoffrey Blainey wrote that Hitler and his Fascist ally Mussolini were atheists. "The aggressive spread of atheism in the Soviet Union alarmed many German Christians", wrote Blainey, and with the Nazis becoming the main opponent of Communism in Germany: "[Hitler] himself saw Christianity as a temporary ally, for in his opinion 'one is either a Christian or a German'. To be both was impossible. Nazism itself was a religion, a pagan religion, and Hitler was its high priest... Its high altar [was] Germany itself and the German people, their soil and forests and language and traditions". Nonetheless, a number of early confidants of Hitler detailed the Führer's complete lack of religious belief. One close confidant, Otto Strasser, disclosed in his 1940 book, Hitler and I, that Hitler was a true disbeliever, succinctly stating: Hitler is an atheist.
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55:44 About the heresy criticism. JP-paraphrase"God's grace enables us, but we still have to do the work. How can both of these be true simultaneously? And the answer depends on your view of time." As a believer, I agree, and so did C.S. Lewis.
About heresy. The Bible is full of paradoxes, (Jesus was human and divine, the Godhead is Three and One, etc.) and one of the most common forms heresy takes is to "resolve" the paradox by denying one side of the paradox to uphold the other. Exhortations to moral purity abound in both the Old and New Testaments, as does the assertion that we are empowered to do good by grace. If moral exhortation (or even moral exhortation without immediately invoking grace) is heresy, then the New Testament is full of heresy. The paradox is perhaps most starkly stated in:
Phil 2:12 So then, my beloved, even as you have always obeyed, not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.
Phil 2:13 For it is God who works in you both to will and to work, for his good pleasure.
C.S. Lewis:
“On Calvinism, both the statement that our final destination is already settled and the view that it still may be either Heaven or hell, seem to me to imply the ultimate reality of Time, which I don’t believe in. The controversy is one I can’t join on either side for I think that in the real (timeless) world it is meaningless…All that Calvinist question — Free-Will and Predestination, is to my mind undiscussable, insoluble. Of course (say us) if a man repents God will accept him. Ah yes, (say they) but the fact of his repenting shows that God has already moved him to do so. This at any rate leaves us with the fact that in any concrete case the question never arrives as a practical one. But I suspect it is really a meaningless question. The difference between Freedom and Necessity is fairly clear on the bodily level: we know the difference between making our teeth chatter on purpose and just finding them chattering with cold. It begins to be less clear when we talk of human love (leaving out the erotic kind). ‘Do I like him because I choose or because I must?’ — there are cases where this has an answer, but others where it seems to me to mean nothing. When we carry it up to relations between God and Man, has the distinction perhaps become nonsensical? After all, when we are most free, it is only with a freedom God has given us: and when our will is most influenced by Grace, it is still our will. And if what our will does is not ‘voluntary’, and if ‘voluntary’ does not mean ‘free’, what are we talking about? I’d leave it all alone.”
and elsewhere
“The Bible really seems to clinch the matter when it puts the two things together into one amazing sentence. The first half is, ‘Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling’—which looks as if everything depended on us and our good actions: but the second half goes on, “For it is God who worketh in you”—which looks as if God did everything and we nothing. I am afraid that is the sort of thing we come up against in Christianity. I am puzzled, but I am not surprised. You see, we are now trying to understand, and to separate into water-tight compartments, what exactly God does and what man does when God and man are working together. And, of course, we begin by thinking it is like two men working together, so that you could say, “He did this bit and I did that.” But this way of thinking breaks down. God is not like that. He is inside you as well as outside: even if we could understand who did what, I do not think human language could properly express it.”
/end of quotes
So much for the theology, but that does not fully cover the inappropriateness of the criticism. Dr. Peterson is not presenting his ideas as a Christian theologian, rather he is giving psychological and practical moral advice, and pointing to a source of more. Do you really thing that the state of not being a Christian absolves one of the responsibility of attempting moral behavior? If you do, then you are the heretic. If you don't your criticism of JP is beside the point. Not all of those to whom he is speaking and writing are Christians.
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You're kidding, right? History didn't start with the fifteenth century Europeans. Aggressive acquisition didn't start with them either. Not even in the Americas. The genius of the West is we invented another way to prosper that nobody ever did before. It used to be that the only way to get ahead was to take stuff, particularly land, from others by force. By way of contrast, Protestantism created the modern libertarian west. We (Protestants) ended slavery; implemented religious freedom, political freedom, academic freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press FIRST, and thus caused the academic, scientific, technological, and material progress that followed; and most of the rest of the world hasn't caught up with it yet. John 8:32 "You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
Socialism is a reversion back to the old paradigm, take it by force.
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ZoomerStasi The notion that an ethnicity is a conspiracy is absurd. You Jew haters help the socialists because you play into their narrative. The only effective lie the socialists have nowadays is accusing US of being YOU. If you did not exist, they could not win anything. They would have to invent you in order to have anything to say after their policies and ideology have been so totally discredited historically.
In fact, every day in every way groypers support the same things the "cultural Marxists" support, from the centrality of "group identity" through the abolition of the civil rights enumerated in the Constitution (all of them, without exception) through segregation, to the opposition to the ideal/goal of limited government and freedom itself.
You contradict yourselves. You say that it is the Jewish religion that prompts Jews to hostility and domination plots toward gentiles and Christians and that Zionism is part of the plot, then when you list subversive Jews in places of power you list atheist Jews whose family has never darkened the door of a synagogue, sometimes for generations, and who are more hostile to Israel than you are. You say the Jews are to be blamed because they killed Christ, then you say modern Jews are not descendants of the Old and New Testament Jews. You deny the historical Holocaust by way of trying to improve the image of Nazis, then call for a holocaust. If a holocaust is bad, why are you calling for one? If it is not bad, why do you spend so much energy trying to deny the 20th century European one? Not only are each of your claims unsupported and absurd in isolation, they don't even fit together into a consistent lie.
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@derekwbell420 "Fascism"
There is nothing raci54 or authoritarian about Trump's policies, so slander. You see the law enforcement apparatus mobilized against anybody remotely conservative, and you somehow claim to regard TRUMP as fa5cist? Whose rights was HE violating? Who was HE using the legal apparatus to punish for their political beliefs? WHAT PLANET ARE YOU FROM? Your expressed opinion has no basis in fact.
Your party is echoing the Na5is point for point. The Black Bloc is the Brown Shir4s. The "mostly peaceful" riots they fueled, funded and armed by leftist billionaires, is KristaIInacht. Jan 6 is the Reichstag fire. It's all there, including your racial segregation, prejudice and racial and political slander and hate, using government power to suppress and terrorize political opposition, moving to restrict gun ownership and possession, locking down state control of businesses and the economy, media censorship, using schools as political indoctrination centers, mobilizing taxpayer money for the production of partizan propaganda, abortion and euthanasia; all straight out of the fa5cist playbook, including your economic program. Your side is doing all these things, we are not and never were. For YOU to call US fa5cist is projection to a delusional degree.
Tax cuts are not authoritarian. Deregulation is not authoritarian. Downsizing government is not authoritarian. Free speech is not authoritarian. The right to keep and bear arms is not authoritarian. Freedom of religion is not authoritarian. Criticism of a government lapdog corporate media is not authoritarian. Speaking the truth to power in the face of persecution is not authoritarian. Opposition to the firing of employees, the cutoff of their access to funds or commerce, violence against their persons and property, and the restriction of their communication on the basis of their political beliefs is not authoritarian. Dismantling a corrupt entrenched unelected bureaucratic state is not authoritarian. All of these things are the diametric opposite of authoritarian. Conservatism is anti-authoritarian fundamentally and point by point. Leftism is authoritarian fundamentally and point by point. We are on the freedom side of every issue except harming children, and you shouldn't be free to do that.
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" That any people who are persecuted for 2,000 years are doing something wrong?"
Longer than that, actually, if you read the Old Testament or know intertestamental history. Can you name any people in this very unjust world who WERE consistently persecuted FOR DOING WRONG? If you don't know that that is not the way this world works you don't know much. If you listened to the video, JP gave a nice succinct PSYCHOLOGICAL explanation for the phenomena in this very video (and you would do well to heed, he knows his psychology). To review: there are these people, foreigners, outsiders, who thrive in our midst, and this provides an occasion for a temptation to envy. You can account for the thriving in two ways. Either they are more industrious, or smarter, or work together more harmoniously than you (but you can't accept that because it would reflect poorly on you, and doesn't flatter or excuse your ENVY), or you can assume that they must be cheating or stealing (and that flatters your ENVY and pride). You don't have to ask the teacher, just look in your own heart, you know it's there: ENVY. Christians have a supplementary explanation for it. This world is in the hands of an malignant spirit, Satan, who hates God and assaults every thing God loves or does. You hate them for thriving in your country and hate them for going home and thriving there.
Consider what the ambassador tells us Israel is thriving in in Israel: TECH. Jews thriving in banking, or trade, can be shoehorned into your self-flattering fantasies of Jewish calumny. But TECH? How does cheating and stealing make you a good computer programmer? It can't. Having a culture that values learning and work helps you develop your mind, but that is a legitimately earned accomplishment, whether you like it or not.
"Could Henry Kissinger's explanation be true? "
I suppose there's a first time for everything. But in his case, it's not the way to bet.
"address to the matter of Ashkenazic Jews not being Semitic,"
It's not an issue, it's an attempt at slander. And if it were true, how would it justify hating them? It doesn't even disrupt the historic claim to the Levant if true, since the Old Testament provides for proselytes. Jewish converts are Jewish. Most of you groypers are inconsistent with each other and yourselves. You say that it is the Jewish religion that prompts Jews to hostility and domination plots toward gentiles and Christians and that Zionism is part of the plot, then when you list subversive Jews in places of power you list atheist Jews whose family has never darkened the door of a synagogue, sometimes for generations, and who are more hostile to Israel than you are. You say the Jews are to be blamed because they killed Christ, then you say modern Jews are not descendants of the Old and New Testament Jews. You deny the historical holocaust by way of trying to improve the image of Nazis, then call for a holocaust. If a holocaust is bad, why are you calling for one? If it is not bad, why do you spend so much energy trying to deny the 20th century European one? Not only are each of your claims unsupported and absurd in isolation, they don't even fit together into a consistent lie.
As for your theory, listen to it objectively: "Yea, sure guys I have this idea. Lets pretend to be Jews in late Roman Europe and the middle-east so we can be persecuted instead of converting to Christianity, so we can become a part of mainstream Roman and Byzantine society. I don't foresee any problems with this plan." It is not something a bunch of Machiavellian plotters would do. IT CONVEYS NO ADVANTAGE. There might have been places and times where converting to Judaism might have conveyed pecuniary or tactical advantage. There and then was not among them.
"And, critically, ex-Soviet Ashkenazim hold the vast majority of political power in Israel."
What's so damning about escaping the Soviet Union? If you think that coming from a communist country tends to make one love communism, you haven't met many Cubans. The socialist background of many of the immigrants blinkered Israel's political imagination for a while, but they're mostly over it. Netanyahu looks like he may be coming back into power as the coalition which ousted him falls apart, and he is a conservative, who revolutionized the Israeli economy with free market reforms. Once again I refer you to the entrepreneurial prosperity in TECH in Israel. That simply doesn't, and can't, happen in socialist countries.
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"Christianity is based on the idea that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah who fulfilled the ancient Hebrew prophesies."
Consequently, Christianity is based on the Hebrew Scriptures. Once you've acknowledged that, you've acknowledged the validity of the Judeo-Christian tradition.
"Also, the morality of Jesus was based on "Love Your Enemies" and thus forgive those who trespass against you."
No that's not the whole of Christian morality. Radical forgiveness is PART of Christian morality. A new part, I grant you, but a new part of a coherent whole.
"The core of Judaic morality is 'An Eye For An Eye' "
That's Israelite civil law. Israel was a nation. The Mosaic law had to provide for civil government. Christianity doesn't preclude the punishment of crimes or personal or national self defense. You're comparing apples and oranges.
"Devarim (Book of Deuteronomy), precisely lays out Judaic morality."
It lays out the supreme civil law of the ancient nation of Israel.
"What is Judeo-Christianity?"
You are changing the term to make it sound like a religion. Nobody is claiming that, so your construction is a straw man.
"Judeo-Islam?"
There is an important similarity between Judaism, Christianity and many more of the beliefs of great societies in history that is lacking in Islam. C. S. Lewis in the appendix to "The Abolition of Man" lists the common themes running through ethical systems throughout history. The first category is the Law of General Benificence (basically the Golden Rule), which is the important notion of a guiding or defining principle for morality as a whole rather than morality being just an arbitrary list of rules. Lewis is unable to find such a category in Islam.
"Judaism opposes Christianity. Yes?"
No. Only in the sense that every religion disagrees with every other. Not in any specific sense. And there is a vast common ground, and most what Western society has drawn from Christianity is part of that common ground.
There is not a shred of Biblical support for your specific contempt toward Jews. The Bible condemns such an attitude throughout:
Genesis 12:3
John 4:20-24
and the definitive treatise on the proper Christian attitude toward Jews: Romans 9-11.
Apart from Jesus, they are unsaved, but we are nowhere told to hate the unsaved, quite the reverse, much less single out one particular group of unsaved for special opprobrium, much less to lie about anyone at all. The Bible is chock full of promises for the future felicity of Israel which have not yet been fulfilled, and shall be without fail. "For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance." As for the regrafting of Israel back into the vine as prophesied in Romans 11; we see this being fulfilled today. There are as many Jewish converts since 2000 as there have been in two centuries prior. This is documented in the YouTube channels "Jews for Jesus" and "ONE FOR ISRAEL". God is on the move. Follow or get out of the way.
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@blesssixone1902
" they want to claim all sorts of different arguments and its all based off bullshit. "
I noted that disabling the safeguards in our election system effectively leaves our democratic system defenseless against cheaters. YOU STILL HAVE NOT ADDRESSED THIS ARGUMENT. And what could be said against it? That evil people don't exist?
". you want to go back in time to try and assert that your party of TODAY voted FOR the voter rights act.
That is where history leaves the question. Your assertion that Republicans want to repeal the Voter Rights Act is still undocumented. You ignored my challenge to present proof.
"What happened to Stacey Abrahams? "
She lost the election and lied about it, just like Hillary.
"WHERE IS THE FRAUD"
https://nypost.com/2020/08/29/political-insider-explains-voter-fraud-with-mail-in-ballots/
https://www.redstate.com/brandon_morse/2020/04/15/tucker-carlson-exposes-democrat-voter-fraud-then-and-now/
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/flashback-new-york-democrat-election-official-admitted-youre-gonna-see-a-lot-of-vote-fraud
https://www.newsweek.com/voter-fraud-realheres-how-democrats-want-steal-2020-election-opinion-1509180
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/25/politics/new-jersey-attorney-general-announces-voting-fraud-charges/index.html
https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/voter-fraud-is-a-huge-problem-in-the-democratic-party
https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud
https://www.dailysignal.com/2020/04/21/15-election-results-that-were-thrown-out-because-of-fraudulent-mail-in-ballots/
[https://thefederalist.com/2016/10/13/voter-fraud-real-heres-proof/
If I lived in a nice safe place like Oklahoma, I might be impressed by your notion that voter fraud is not a problem in the US. I live in Illinois, and for all 61 years of my life no national election has gone for the Republicans CLOSELY. We live in a "house wins all ties" state where the Chicago Democrat machine routinely cheats every national, statewide, and municipal election and has done so for all the 61 years of my life. In order to get a Republican into the Governor's mansion or a federal office, we have to win in a landslide so large that conventional voter fraud can't beat it:
https://www.heritage.org/election-integrity/report/where-theres-smoke-theres-fire-100000-stolen-votes-chicago
https://patriots4freedom.com/2020/01/voter-fraud-confirmed-in-illinois/
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/01/07/five_states_face_federal_lawsuit_over_inaccurate_voter_registrations__142089.htmlWhat happened to Stacey Abrahams?
https://www.redstate.com/elizabeth-vaughn/2020/02/03/judicial-watch-identifies-378-u.s.-counties-with-more-registered-voters-than-citizens-8-found-in-iowa/
https://www.newsweek.com/top-five-rigged-us-presidential-elections-511765What happened to Stacey Abrahams?
Illinois has Halloween the same time as everybody else, but in Cook county, election night is the night of the living dead:
https://legalinsurrection.com/2016/10/chicago-investigation-finds-dead-people-votiWhat happened to Stacey Abrahams? ng-years-after-their-death/
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2016/10/29/dead-chicago-voters-voted/
When democrats sought to steal the 2000 presidential election, they sent for "the pros from Chicago", including an scion of the Daley family, of Chicago Democrat machine fame. They cynically invoked him as a "vote fraud expert". For those not familiar with Chicago politics, the Daleys are experts at committing voter fraud, not preventing it. Bush had won the Florida presidential election and an automatic recount. The secretary of state (the official constitutionally empowered to certify the election) had certified the election. The Florida Supreme Court intervened (it is not clear that they have jurisdiction, the US constitution states that the designated state officer has the authority to certify the election).
The Florida Supreme court called for a manual recount of selected Democrat counties only. When the Republican observers arrived at the counting facility, the democrats had already cracked open the seals and started handling the ballots. "Chain of custody" protocol requires that the opposing party observers be present BEFORE the seals are broken. The hole puncher which is used to cast votes What happened to Stacey Abrahams? was in the hands of the Democrat "counters" and the punched out "chads" were on the floor of the counting room. Not of the polling place, the counting room. Clearly, those particular votes were not being "counted", they were being CAST from undervote ballots. Eventually, the US Supreme Court put an end to this fiasco:
https://politics1.com/recount.htm
"My Guy, your arguments are NOTHING NEW or even ORIGINAL"
Novelty is not a prerequisite for truth.
"You all love to talk this smaller government bullshit while wanting to force everyone to believe YOUR BRAND of "life". "
We are invariably the ones being forced, particularly in the past 60 years.
"Also read the part where I wrote that I do not support EITHER party."
I respond to the part where you attack conservatives and Republicans, like the screed referenced above.
"Please.... we haven't fought in ANY war to preserve our collective freedoms since the Revolutionary War "
Have you heard of the American Civil War? Also, there was an obvious freedom tie-in to our involvement in WW2 and the Cold War and associated battles.
"resource grabbing"
Show me the resources we havWhat happened to Stacey Abrahams? e "grabbed". They don't exist. Iraq had oil, but WE didn't get any of it.
"Please STOP IT."
You have no point. You have no case. Name calling and ad hominem attacks will not go unanswered.
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Yes, an agnostic that isn't an anti-theist like the old "new atheists". Even Dawkins is dithering and backpedaling a bit. Both Elon and Dawkins have called themselves recently "cultural Christians", but crucially Elon doesn't hate Christianity and want to extirpate it like Dawkins does (after Christianity has, he hopes, saved Britain from the onslaught of the Paynim hordes. Again.) I fully expect Dawkins, at least to resume business as usual as soon as Britain's existential crisis has passed (if it does).
I've prayed for Christian resurgence and revival. But I've also prayed for this. For us, Jesus will not be used as a means to an end, He is Lord, but it's only Christian charity to wish for our neighbors all the grace they can receive, and peace and prosperity as a temporal good, with all its spiritual dangers.
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"Hunter was not in the room and has nothing to do with this case."
The articles turn on the notion that Trump wanted the Bidens investigated for self serving purposes. If the Biden-Burisma connection looks corrupt, then Trump wanted the Bidens investigated for legitimate purposes. That undercuts the Democrat narrative completely. Also, it has Joe Biden actually doing a "quid pro quo" for self serving purposes when he explicitly links American aid to the firing of a Ukrainian investigator. After insisting that the disproven quid pro quo on Trumps part demands Trump's removal, how can they pretend an actual self-serving quid pro quo doesn't disqualify Biden?
If the Biden-Burisma connection is elaborated in nationally televised hearings, Joe Biden will never be president. Democrat leadership can afford to toss him under the buss when they're sure he will lose the nomination. Until then they can't. Trump's removal was never going to happen. This whole fiasco has been about influencing the 2020 election from the start. From the Democrat standpoint, no amount of embarrassment of Trump in the short term is worth handing him the election. Cruz sees this clearly. The question is: do the Democrats? From listening to you, I dare to hope that they don't. In the olden days, when the MSM had a lock on the flow of information, they might have gotten away with anything, but, in the words of a poet of my generation, "the times, they are a changin'".
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@ValentineCorp "I wish the right didn’t have those underlying racist ideologies,"
Just because you give the same label "right" to Republicans and groypers doesn't make them the same thing. Groypers aren't Republicans, conservatives, or even Trump supporters. Just read what they say on social media, about all of the above. In fact, every day in every way groypers support the same things the "cultural Marxists" support, from the centrality of "group identity" through the abolition of the civil rights enumerated in the Constitution (all of them, without exception) through segregation, to the opposition to the ideal/goal of limited government and freedom itself. This is how you know they are false flag leftists-BECAUSE ALL OF THE THINGS THEY ADVOCATE ARE LEFTIST THINGS.
Their man Spencer endorsed Biden/Harris in '20. Nick Fuentes tried to urge Georgia conservatives to stay home and not vote in the runoff elections that handed the Dems the effective majority in the Senate. They are pulling out all the stops to ensure that conservatives lose, they are doing this OPENLY, and you HAVEN'T NOTICED? That is why they denigrate EVERY EFFECTIVE CONSERVATIVE VOICE. Fascist and Marxists (two flavors of socialism) have been playing this game since the 1920s: "If you're not one of us you're one of them". BS. Occasionally they fight each other but most of the time they cooperate against liberty.
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popdavid-dd4lx "we don’t have it here and we could get it with the exact amount of money we send Israel"
This is absurdly wrong. Even as much as Israel is required by its unfortunate neighborhood to spend an unusually large percentage of their national budget on defense, they spend much more on their health care system. The notion that the US, with 35 times as many people could do the same thing for 15% (NOT 20%) of Israel's defense budget is way wrong. When you just make up assertions without checking facts, that's lying. When you do so in an evil cause, that's worse.
<enter sarcasm>
So, you're telling me that cutting out aid to Israel will let us dip a billions dollar bucket out of Biden's 1.4 TRILLION dollar deficit? And all it would cost me is another genocide larger than the mid-20th century one, betraying an ally, and placing Europe an the US on the front line of a rampant, energized, and loot empowered jihad? Where do I sign?
<exit sarcasm>
Since when are Democrats deficit hawks? We're not dealing with fiscal responsibility here. It's something a great deal darker.
And no, we don't want socialized medicine here in the US. One of the ads I keep getting on vids is soliciting charitable funds to send a young Israeli girl to the US to get a life saving heart operation. Don't tell me Jews don't make good doctors. Israel is at the forefront of many tech fields, disproportionately for its size. Socialism has ruined Israel's health care. There is a reason why the world goes to the US for advanced health care. Ours is the best, because the government DOESN'T CONTROL IT. (Unless you want a still-beating heart transplant fresh from a Uighur, a house church Christian, or a dissident; in which case try China, they have a form for you to sell your soul, just sign on the line, never mind the ink) At least Israel LETS its citizens leave for medical care. The UK is in the habit of letting its health care bureaucracy PROHIBIT British subjects from going abroad for care. When they've determined your daughter must be put down, they won't ALLOW a second opinion. There was a prominent example of this last hear and another pending this year. Italy has offered the child Italian citizenship to pry her loose so she can get a chance at treatment, no joy so far.
Every time you take something that the free market CAN provide and place it under the government you lose freedom. The more aspects of our life you place under the same organization that we must have to enforce our laws and defend our national interest, the closer that organization bends to tyranny. The common thread, is that to the libertarian sensibility essential freedom is freedom TO (to act), and to the socialist is freedom FROM (from responsibilities, uncertainties). Democracy may well be necessary for freedom, but it is certainly insufficient and is not an end unto itself. Democracy was just one of the many MEANS the founders employed to serve the END of spreading out power within the government. Equally necessary is limiting the SIZE of the thing as a whole. Size both in terms of categories of jurisdiction and activity and in terms of budget. It is not just that government spending inflates our currency and allocates resources away from productive endeavors, the spending power would be dangerous even if the value were donated by well meaning space aliens. Creeping socialism is the characteristic cancer to which democracies are prone. It killed Venezuela. James Madison in Federalist 51, states the problem:
"The great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. The provision for defense must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of attack. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions."
A common fallacy of utopian ideologues is that human nature is inherently good, but is being held back by some flaw in the social contract. To the communist free markets; to the anarchist government; to the New Atheists religion, to primitivists agriculture or technology, to racists whites or blacks or Jews or whoever; is the root of all evil. The first part of Genesis DOES have something to say about this because it NEGATES the common assumption of each of the above "isms". Regardless of how literally you take the text, the MORAL of the account is plain as a pikestaff. The clear, harsh, intolerable, and absolutely vital and central message of the fall is that WE ARE OUR PROBLEM, not any externality or construct. As the song says, "You can run from yourself, but you won't get far. 'Cause wherever you go --- There you are." This is the starting point of clarity in history, sociology, and psychiatry; every study which pertains to the nature of humanity. In fact, the same flawed, imperfect, selfish, stupid nature that infests the lord, or the "capitalist", infests the politician and the bureaucrat. "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." The "capitalist" AS SUCH, can only hire or bribe. An unchecked authoritarian government can do that (with other people's money), plus arrest, torture, and kill you or your family. It is incoherent to fear the former and not fear the latter. No "angel" is available to bear this power benignly.
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@StrangeAttractor There is nothing in a body of knowledge that would keep the knower from doing evil. That is why a technocracy is no better than any other oligarchy. Fortunately, we don't need to be scientists to know that when predictions fail they disconfirm the theories that predicted them:
In 1988, James Hansen testified before the US Congress about the dangers of anthropogenic global warming. His advocates in Congress had scheduled the testimony on what was forecast to be the hottest day of that year and sabotaged the House floor air conditioning by opening the windows.
Hansen presented three scenarios of projected future warming from hottest to coolest. Scenario A he called "Business as Usual", assumed carbon emissions increasing on a projection curve of past increase. Scenario B assumed the rate increase of carbon emissions was held at 1988 levels. Scenario C assumed that the level of carbon emissions was held at 1988 levels.
The actual level of carbon emissions was closest to his A scenario, while measured temperatures were below his C scenario. He also claimed that the late '80s and '90s would see "greater than average warming in the southeast U.S. and the Midwest". No such spike has been measured in these regions. This is disconfirmation.
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2018/06/22/the-failed-predictions-of-james-hansen/
________________________
According to July 5, 1989, article in the Miami Herald, the then-director of the New York office of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), Noel Brown, warned of a “10-year window of opportunity to solve” global warming. According to the 1989 article, “A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000. Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of ‘eco-refugees,’ threatening political chaos.” Disconfirmed.
________________________
"(By) 1995, the greenhouse effect would be desolating the heartlands of North America and Eurasia with horrific drought, causing crop failures and food riots... (By 1996) The Platte River of Nebraska would be dry, while a continent-wide black blizzard of prairie topsoil will stop traffic on interstates, strip paint from houses, and shutdown computers." Micheal Oppenheimer, published in Dead Heat, St. Martin's Press, 1990
Disconfirmed.
_________________________
In 1998, Micheal E. Mann, et. al. published the infamous "hockey stick" graph. It was immediately called into question for being a supposed summary of temperatures for the past thousand years which did not register the Medieval Warming Peroid or the Little Ice age, both attested by history and ice core data. Here the problem is not just the inability to correctly project the future, but a refusal to accurately represent the past. Also, he changed data methodologies on different parts of the graph.
In an attempt to silence his critics, he filed suit against Canadian climatologist Tim Ball and commentator Mark Steyn. Mann faces bankruptcy as a result of counterclaims following the collapse of his suit against Ball. Steyn has also countersued. Mann’s chief undoing in all such lawsuits is highlighted in a quote in Steyn’s latest counterclaim:
“Plaintiff continues to evade the one action that might definitively establish its [his science’s] respectability – by objecting, in the courts of Virginia, British Columbia and elsewhere, to the release of his research in this field. See Cuccinelli vs Rectors and Visitors of the University of Virginia…”
https://principia-scientific.org/michael-mann-faces-bankruptcy-as-his-courtroom-climate-capers-collapse/
Mann's work was at first embraced by the global warming alarmist community, being central to the UNs 3rd Assessment report in 2001. Mann's work has since been dismissed by scientists around the world who subscribe to global warming.
_________________________
Back in 2000, climate scientist David Viner had a very dire prediction for those living in England: Snow was going to become almost extinct there.
In a viral interview with the U.K. Independent, Viner said that snow on the isles was going to be “a very rare and exciting event.”
“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” Viner said. “We’re really going to get caught out. Snow will probably cause chaos in 20 years time.”
Disconfirmed.
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"Dave your attitude that those living in a State of America where they don't like the local government should move to another STATE?!!!!!!!!"
Talk about turning a statement on it's head. He is a libertarian, he's not about forcing people to do anything (other than forcing them to mind their own business, which is the essential task of limited government, because left to themselves, people won't) nor even offering unsolicited advice. He is about giving people options. He is presenting being ABLE to vote with your feet as an advantage of localized government. Your objection is not to people being uprooted (because you know it is not forced). You can't stand the notion of people having a choice.
"The U.S. Census Bureau reports that the average American moves 12 times during his lifetime, according to Mayflower Transit. Many reasons contribute to the need to move, such as buying or renting a new residence, pursuing a job opportunity, attending college or a change in marital status."
https://www.reference.com/health/many-times-average-american-move-e8e3a9c6af3327f5
As for the difficulty, the distance moved is not much of a factor in a move, you have to do as much work whether you're moving across the country or across town. How many people do you know that have never moved?
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As charged, you call people having a choice "unfair". It is true that human nature devolves into despotism. This is the minimum necessary function of government, to force people to mind their own business, for their temptation to butt into other's business is humanity's besetting flaw. Yes, limiting government is hard, for that reason. Pushing as close to that ideal as possible is the only alternative to sliding into despotism, which is the way of entropy, downhill, the way things go if good men don't fight it. We have never attained that goal but we have been the most free, and most prosperous especially at the bottom end, and minimized the temptation to corruption, when we have come the closest to it. It is not a naive utopia, because it builds on a realistic view of human nature and directly confronts and thwarts our key failings. Strong state is naive and utopian, because it assumes that the same flawed humans whom you say cannot be trusted with the power of wealth as businessmen can somehow be entrusted with ALL the wealth AND the power to censor, PLUS the power to have you shot.
Federalist #51 James Madison:
"It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions."
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Folks, keeping pornography and racism out of the school library and curriculum is not censorship, and you love censorship anyway, so don't project. We all learned about blacks in history in school, segregating history is racist, the teacher's unions now want to lie about history. There haven't been any Confederates states since the Democrats lost the war, though the Democrats are bringing back segregation and race hatred and are importing an underclass to work their fields and do their domestic work.
As for freedom/authoritarianism, Republicans are on the freedom and Democrats on the authoritarian side of EVERY ISSUE except harming and brainwashing children (and you shouldn't be free to do that). Tax cuts are not authoritarian. Deregulation is not authoritarian. Free speech is not authoritarian. The right to keep and bear arms is not authoritarian. Freedom of religion is not authoritarian. Criticism of a government lapdog corporate media is not authoritarian. Speaking the truth to power in the face of persecution is not authoritarian. Opposition to the firing of employees, the cutoff of their access to funds or commerce, violence against their persons and property, and the restriction of their communication on the basis of their political beliefs is not authoritarian. All of these things are the diametric opposite of authoritarian. Conservatism is anti-authoritarian fundamentally and point by point. Leftism is authoritarian fundamentally and point by point.
Authoritarianism is censorship, subsidized violence, gun control, political indoctrination in schools, the National Endowment for the Arts, PBS, the Ad Council (a free country should not have STATE FUNDED PROPAGANDA OUTLETS in peacetime), the corporate ESG "social credit" score, IRS targeting political opposition, arrests and raids on political opposition, dismantling of immigration controls to undercut the working class financially and politically, mask mandates, vax mandates, gun free zones, undermining the ancient common law understanding of self defense, isolation of bureaucrats from accountability, partizan mobilization of public sector unions, government sources generating disinformation about political issues (Hunter laptop, etc.), Soviet style show trials, partizan termination of dissenting government employees (who were not insubordinate), ballot harvesting, pronoun mandates, opposition to voter ID and reasonable anti-fraud measures, general partizan mobilization of the regulatory and law enforcement apparatus against political opposition enhanced by a proliferation of regulations making it hard not to violate one by accident, "research grants" steered towards academics and "scientists" which reinforce the empowering narratives like "climate change", hostility towards Christianity, attacks on parental rights, vastly scaled up government spending increases the power of the government dangerously and undercuts every other power base in the jurisdiction through inflation, systematic attacks on every amendment in the Bill of Rights, and a few more civil liberty clauses in the Constitution.
When you sue us because we won't do art that violates our conscience, that's authoritarian. When we pick up our signs and protest, and you dress up in black stuff and beat us up, that's authoritarian. When you dox and harass judges, politicians, and media figures in public and at their homes, that's authoritarian. When we speak out against racist "curricula" in school board meetings and you have us investigated and put on terrorist watch lists, that's authoritarian.
Your party is echoing the Nazis point for point. The Black Bloc is the Brown Shirts. The "mostly peaceful" riots they fueled, funded and armed by leftist billionaires, is Kristallnacht. Jan 6 is the Reichstag fire. It's all there, including your racial segregation, prejudice and racial and political slander and hate, using government power to suppress and terrorize political opposition, moving to restrict gun ownership and possession, locking down state control of businesses and the economy, media censorship, using schools as political indoctrination centers, mobilizing taxpayer money for the production of partizan propaganda, abortion and euthanasia; all straight out of the Nazi playbook, including your economic program. Your side is doing all these things, we are not and never were. For YOU to call US authoritarian is projection to a delusional degree.
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"New" atheists are always reasoning in a circle in the same way. They equivocate over their own proprietary definitions of words, which contain their desired conclusion in the defintion, then reason in a circle. Always the same fallacy.
"Evidence is natural (within our universe)… god is supernatural (outside our universe). You can’t have evidence (natural) for god (supernatural)"
One entity being in one realm does not automatically exclude influence from an entity in another realm. Ukraine exists inside its borders. Russia existed outside Ukraine's borders. It DOES NOT FOLLOW that Russia can't invade Ukraine. EVERYTHING we use the word "supernatural" to refer to ALWAYS means effects within the material/physical world from outside the material/physical. If we would except your definition, then we would have to conclude that God is not supernatural, because the definition of God does not correspond to your definition of the category "supernatural". This is how you know your definition is nonsense. You start by assuming what you're pretending to prove, then reason in a circle.
"We can demonstrate the universe wasn't created."
Do it.
"it is eternal"
The current consensus of cosmology is that the Universe, including all matter, energy, and time itself as a physical entity began with the Big Bang tens of billions of years ago.
"supernatural is by definition not a part of our universe."
If you define "universe" to exclude the non-material/physical, then the supernatural has a part of itself outside the universe. It does not follow that the material/physical cannot be affected by things outside it. If you define "universe" to be all that can be in evidence, then it includes anything that interacts with it, including the supernatural. Again, equivocation over the definition of words never proved a thing in the history of human discourse.
"The 4 Laws of Thermodynamics alone disprove creationism."
The Second Law of Thermodynamics proves that the universe isn't eternal. Laws never disprove legislators.
"You aren’t a Physicist, I am."
If you were a physicist, you would know that the cosmological consensus is that the universe began.
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Darn it as much as you like democracy is not socialism. Wanting to save democracy in the US is not the same thing as classifying the US as a democracy. Democratic election of representatives and officials in the Federal government and the requirement for the states admitted to have a representative form of government were just one among many, even if the most profound and radical, means of DISPERSING POWER. Often the the system of the US republic is compared unfavorably with a parliamentary system, for instance, on the grounds of efficiency. The parliamentary supposedly more rapidly implements the sense of the majority. Such critics are mistaking a means for an end. The founders of the US constitutional republic were concerned with dissipating power, of keeping it from being concentrated and thus facilitating tyranny. Democracy is just one, even if the most important and radical, of the means to this end. "Checks and balances" were placed throughout the system. Gridlock is a feature, not a bug. Democracy may well be necessary for freedom, but it is certainly INSUFFICIENT.
That being said, it is absurd to berate anybody who refers to the US democracy, or discusses the democratic aspect of our government. Classifying the US and other Western nations under the generalization "democracies" is a useful and, as far as it goes, valid usage. For one thing, no 2 critics who dogmatically insist that the US be referred to exclusively as a "republic" and never as a "democracy" posit the same definition (if they posit any at all) of what "republic" means. Often, they are fuzzy on the definition of "democracy" as well. The term "republic" is better as a description of the US, but in some contexts, particularly when discussing voting, or grouping our closest allies by common values, democracy is an important concept. It is the left, not conservative Constitutionalists, who are in the business of banning words.
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@Zack Coggins "Americans cheered because the invasion was to stop terrorism."
And Saddam Hussein was a state sponsor of terrorism. We knew this before and found more proof of it when we invaded.
Documentary evidence:
(I have links for all this, but YT or PotLE isn't letting me post them)
Physical evidence:
(I have links for all this, but YT or PotLE isn't letting me post them)
including fuselage mock-up used to train hijackers
Human evidence, Saddam Husein's Iraq provided sanctuary for:
Abu Nidal - terrorist leader
Abu Abbas - Achille Lauro hijacker and murderer of wheelchair-bound US citizen Leon Klinghoffer, captured by US forces in Iraq in 2005
Abdul Rahman Yasin - wanted for his connection to the original WTC bombing.
Among other activites, the Iraqi dictator payed the families of Palestinian suicide bombers large rewards.
"you suggesting Iraq was complicit in the attacks on 9/11?"
No, Bush inaugurated a war on terror, not a war on 9/11.
" If were concerned about holding those involved in terror attacks on the US then we should have invaded Saudi."
What part of "state SPONSOR of terror" do you not understand? If we attacked every country where terrorists were RECRUITED, we would have to attack ourselves.
And while we're on the subject, the "Bush lied, people died" narrative is fully and diametrically false. There are two problems with this slander:
1. WMD's were not the main reason cited for the Iraq war by the administration. Saddam's Iraq being a state sponsor of terror was; as was amply proved before and after the war.
2. The much maligned "16 words" in a several hour state of the union address,"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa", supposedly the justification for the "Bush lied, people died" narrative, WERE NOT, in fact, A LIE.
a. The MSM's only source cited for the accusation was an article published by the nobody husband of Valerie Plame who claimed that he had talked to government officials of Niger who denied the contact. In other words, the MSM was taking the word of a nobody over that of British Intelligence. (Which nobody himself lied, by suppressing the word of those Niger officials who confirmed the contact.)
(By the way, a word on the accusation that the Bush Administration outed a CIA agent's name, the aforementioned Valerie Plame, as punishment for her contradiction of the administration line is bogus from both ends. It is a matter of public knowledge that a journalist revealed her name, not the administration, and she wasn't even an agent, so her identity was not a secret. She was an analyst working a desk job in CIA headquarters, and her name was on the directory on the wall at the reception desk, in full public view.)
There was never a credible reason to doubt that Hussein did seek the material.
b. British Intelligence always stood by the report.
c. The MSM's narrative was concocted when the yellowcake uranium was not immediately found after the initial invasion. It was found later and disposed of properly:
(I have links for all this, but YT or PotLE isn't letting me post them)
Bush's "nation building" ambitions in both Iraq and Afghanistan were misguided. The proper procedure for dealing with a state sponsor of terror should be:
1. Defeat the nation's military and co-belligerants.\
2. Shoot the national leaders and the terrorists.
3. Leave.
4. Repeat as necessary.
This plays to our national strengths. We excel at battle. We suck at occupation. We have far fewer casualties in the former, and doing the latter actually dulls the edge of our battle skills. I don't buy "You broke it, you own it." It is the people who permitted the bad guys to take over that broke the country. We can't reverse the consequences of global folly. We can readily disincentivise the export of such folly. Sooner or later people have to take responsibility for cleaning up their own countries.
About "war for oil". No evidence has been presented that oil had a disproportionate role in motivating our Middle East wars, and it has been noted that none of the oil stuck to our fingers. It must be added that if you mean "the free flow of oil at market prices without blackmail", then as far as it goes, that is a noble, even a selfless goal. Our major allies are also major competitors in the high tech goods sector, and many of them are more dependent on oil imports than we are. It may be in the geopolitical/military interest of world peace for the rest of the "first world" to prosper, it is arguably not in the US' narrow FINANCIAL interest.
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"Woke" is the successor to "politically correct". "Politically correct" is a translation of a Russian phrase from the Soviet era. It was a recognition of Soviet enforcement of dogmatic "truth". When official non-acceptance of a fact is causing a problem, and your friend is contemplating saying the unsayable in public, you say, "You may be factually correct, but you are politically incorrect." This usage filtered its way into the Western left, and, as leftist authoritarian memes tend to do in a freer society, began to become so noxious that nobody would use it outside of dark sarcasm as a contemptuous term of ridicule. And we all would have lived happily ever after.
This tends to happen to leftist euphemisms once the sane folk figure out what the cryptic terminology means. Hence the restless reinvention of new leftist euphemisms. The waxing leftist power bloc, deprived of "politically correct" needed a new euphemism for their suppression of "wrongthink". Since they were more and more indoctrinating young folk in their causes du jour as a result of the "long march through the institutions" having locked down key institutions of higher learning and the teacher's unions for primary and secondary schools, it was convenient to couch the party line as an awakening to inspire and relate to their new charges/victims. They needed a shibboleth adjective to separate the sheep from the goats, and settled on the stylishly hip-hop sounding "woke".
It was a shortcut for the authoritarian notion that anyone who challenged the establishment position on various issues calculated to divide the society and empower the authorities, such as alphabet "community" dogma, discrimination on the basis of race or sex, certain "environmental" issues, should be slandered, marginalized, cancelled, fired, jailed, or killed. Residual love of freedom in the West resulted in this euphemism sharing the fate of former euphemisms, being used ironically or sarcastically by their intended victims, to the point that they could no longer use the term in public without risking being laughed out of the room.
Since the term is now used almost exclusively by freedom loving folk, some latecomers and youth quite innocently get the impression that the term was coined by conservatives as a derisive term for leftists. No, the leftists coined and defined the term and now that their intended victims are wise to it, will have to devise another (and so on, lather, rinse repeat). In the meantime they will have to make do with calling their victims names, suing them, censoring them, arresting them, and assaulting them.
I hope you found this lesson helpful, and if you have any further questions, don't hesitate to ask. It may take me a while to reply. The side which tries to settle a question of fact by the use of force is the obscurantist side, every time. That's how you know who the bad guys are.
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Don't be obtuse! All but psychopaths know that they don't live up to their own standards, that is to say the standards they can't help but hold others to. Guilt is not a state of mind, it is the objective human condition. Christians are by no means the only, nor even the first, to say the quiet part out loud but Christianity is the only thing you can do about it. That sort of thing will never be popular, any more than the folk who urge us to eat and drink in moderation, etc. Your absurd attempt to make us feel guilty about warning you of the cliff you're approaching leaves us unmoved.
Oppressors have never liked it when we snatched their victims from their clutches. Protestantism created the modern libertarian west. We (Protestants) ended slavery; implemented religious freedom, political freedom, academic freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press FIRST, and thus caused the academic, scientific, technological, and material progress that followed; and most of the rest of the world hasn't caught up with it yet. John 8:32 "You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
And what do you propose as an alternative? Atheism? It's obvious where this is going. In order to rid yourself of an external voice of conscience awakening the inner, you would rather have propagandists haranguing you in service of the nomenclatura and the despot, and arresting you or murdering you if you dissent. From the Jacobin Reign of Terror in the French Revolution, through the Soviet Union, the Third Reich, Communist China, and the Pol Pot regime; the result of a society based on atheism has invariably been bloodbath after bloodbath. The USSR alone murdered more of its own civilians than have ever been killed in all the inquisitions, pogroms, and purely religious wars in recorded history, and they only lasted: what? 80 or so years?
If you don't oppose this attack on YOUR freedom of thought and expression, you have no MORAL STANDING to, and may soon enough have no POWER to, complain about anything whatsoever.
First They Came For The Jews / Martin Niemöller
First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.
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He got his ideas from Nietzsche. He was interested in using religion as a control device, but he was an atheist. And what do you propose as an alternative? Atheism? As an antidote to ideological murder, that has a singularly abysmal track record. From the Jacobin Reign of Terror in the French Revolution, through the Soviet Union, the Third Reich, Communist China, and the Pol Pot regime; the result of a society based on atheism has invariably been bloodbath after bloodbath. The USSR alone murdered more of its own civilians than have ever been killed in all the inquisitions, pogroms, and purely religious wars in recorded history, and they only lasted: what? 80 or so years?
Protestantism created the modern libertarian west. We (Protestants) ended slavery; implemented religious freedom, political freedom, academic freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press FIRST, and thus caused the academic, scientific, technological, and material progress that followed; and most of the rest of the world hasn't caught up with it yet. John 8:32 "You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
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@Madonnalitta1 " There was no 'woke' in Tolkiens time."
Two levels of answer:
1. Of course not, that was the point of the joke.
2. Not fully metastasized, but more than nascent. Tolkien's contemporary Lewis says in the voice of his demon character Screwtape advising a junior tempter:
Meanwhile, as a delightful byproduct, the few (fewer every day) who will not be made Normal and Regular and Like Folks and Integrated increasingly tend to become in reality the prigs and cranks which the rabble would in any case have believed them to be. For suspicion often creates what it suspects. ("Since, whatever I do, the neighbors are going to think me a witch, or a Communist agent, I might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, and become one in reality.") As a result, we now have an intelligentsia which, though very small, is very useful to the cause of Hell.
That, however, is a mere byproduct. What I want to fix your attention on is the vast, overall movement towards the discrediting, and finally the elimination, of every kind of human excellence — moral, cultural, social, or intellectual. And is it not pretty to notice how "democracy" (in the incantatory sense) is now doing for us the work that was once done by the most ancient Dictatorships, and by the same methods? You remember how one of the Greek Dictators (they called them "tyrants" then) sent an envoy to another Dictator to ask his advice about the principles of government. The second Dictator led the envoy into a field of grain, and there he sniped off with his cane the top of every stalk that rose an inch or so above the general level. The moral was plain. Allow no preeminence among your subjects. Let no man live who is wiser or better or more famous or even handsomer than the mass. Cut them all down to a level: all slaves, all ciphers, all nobodies. All equals. Thus Tyrants could practice, in a sense, "democracy." But now "democracy" can do the same work without any tyranny other than her own. No one need now go through the field with a cane. The little stalks will now of themselves bite the tops off the big ones. The big ones are beginning to bite off their own in their desire to Be Like Stalks.
My own experience, as I have said, was mainly on the English sector, and I still get more news from it than from any other. It may be that what I am now going to say will not apply so fully to the sectors in which some of you may be operating. But you can make the necessary adjustments when you get there. Some application it will almost certainly have. If it has too little, you must labor to make the country you are dealing with more like what England already is.
In that promising land the spirit of "I'm as good as you" has already become something more than a generally social influence. It begins to work itself into their educational system. How far its operations there have gone at the present moment, I should not like to say with certainty. Nor does it matter. Once you have grasped the tendency, you can easily predict its future developments; especially as we ourselves will play our part in the developing. The basic principle of the new education is to be that dunces and idlers must not be made to feel inferior to intelligent and industrious pupils. That would be "undemocratic." These differences between the pupils — for they are obviously and nakedly individual differences — must be disguised. This can be done on various levels. At universities, examinations must be framed so that nearly all the students get good marks. Entrance examinations must be framed so that all, or nearly all, citizens can go to universities, whether they have any power (or wish) to profit by higher education or not. At schools, the children who are too stupid or lazy to learn languages and mathematics and elementary science can be set to doing the things that children used to do in their spare time. Let them, for example, make mud pies and call it modeling. But all the time there must be no faintest hint that they are inferior to the children who are at work. Whatever nonsense they are engaged in must have — I believe the English already use the phrase — parity of esteem." An even more drastic scheme is not impossible. Children who are fit to proceed to a higher class may be artificially kept back, because the others would get a trauma — Beelzebub, what a useful word! — by being left behind. The bright pupil thus remains democratically fettered to his own age group throughout his school career, and a boy who would be capable of tackling Aeschylus or Dante sits listening to his coeval's attempts to spell out A CAT SAT ON A MAT.
In a word, we may reasonably hope for the virtual abolition of education when "I'm as good as you" has fully had its way. All incentives to learn and all penalties for not learning will vanish. The few who might want to learn will be prevented; who are they to over-top their fellows? And anyway the teachers — or should I say, nurses? — will be far too busy reassuring the dunces and patting them on the back to waste any time on real teaching. We shall no longer have to plan and toil to spread imperturbable conceit and incurable ignorance among men. The little vermin themselves will do it for us.
Of course, this would not follow unless all education became state education. But it will. That is part of the same movement. Penal taxes, designed for that purpose, are liquidating the Middle Class, the class who were prepared to save and spend and make sacrifices in order to have their children privately educated. The removal of this class, besides linking up with the abolition of education, is, fortunately, an inevitable effect of the spirit that says "I'm as good as you". This was, after all, the social group which gave to the humans the overwhelming majority of their scientists, physicians, philosophers, theologians, poets, artists, composers, architects, jurists, and administrators. If ever there was a bunch of tall stalks that needed their tops knocked off, it was surely they. As an English politician remarked not long ago, "A democracy does not want great men."
It would be idle to ask of such a creature whether by want it meant "need" or, "like." But you had better be clear. For here Aristotle's question comes up again.
We, in Hell, would welcome the disappearance of democracy in the strict sense of that word, the political arrangement so called. Like all forms of government, it often works to our advantage, but on the whole less often than other forms. What we must realize is that "democracy" in the diabolical sense ("I'm as good as you", Being like Folks, Togetherness) is the finest instrument we could possibly have for extirpating political democracies from the face of the earth.
For "democracy" or the "democratic spirit" (diabolical sense) leads to a nation without great men, a nation mainly of sub-literates, full of the cocksureness which flattery breeds on ignorance, and quick to snarl or whimper at the first hint of criticism. And that is what Hell wishes every democratic people to be. For when such a nation meets in conflict a nation where children have been made to work at school, where talent is placed in high posts, and where the ignorant mass are allowed no say at all in public affairs, only one result is possible.
The democracies were surprised lately when they found that Russia had got ahead of them in science. What a delicious specimen of human blindness! If the whole tendency of their society is opposed to every sort of excellence, why did they expect their scientists to excel?
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Republicans are pretty much where they were in 1980. The Democrats have moved way to the left. I can demonstrate this:
The biggest thing, of course, is that a whole host of radical new issues have appeared out of the blue. Indoctrinating preadolescent children in dangerous sexual practices that will leave them more vulnerable to exploitation by sexual predators and a lucrative industry of quack elective drugs and procedures which will leave them impotent, frigid, and sterile; and dependent on continual, extra, and expensive medical care just to stay alive. Mainstreaming of censorship and political slander and violence. Mobilization of the "law enforcement" apparatus to suppress political dissent. Corporate and academic departments devoted to sequestration and punishment of political views. Mandatory Orwellian "struggle sessions" indoctrinating and enforcing the party line. Most of these things were not even being advocated quite recently, much less done. In the field of race relations, Democrats are utterly abandoning the ideal of the colorblind society in favor of "positive racism" and segregation:
<url excised so the post won't get autodeleted, if you want to see the links, see the version of this post I've posted on the BitChute version of this vid.>
But if you want to quantify the drastic leftward shift of the Democrat party, the easiest thing to graph and track is the shift in registered party members' views on issues that have actually existed long enough to be tracked over time. I can remember when free speech was not a partizan issue. Neither was support for Israel. Dems used to be, if anything, more hawkish about immigration control than Republicans. As recently as Obama's first presidential run, the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman (back when we could all agree on what those terms meant) was a plank in the DEMOCRAT party platform. Republicans haven't moved much since the 1980s when the Reagan revolution reversed the simultaneous double-digit inflation and unemployment and "national malaise" (Carter's phrase). The Democrats' leftward movement on a number of the same issues over time is a verifiable and quantifiable fact, as show in the charts and figures in these articles:
"Democrats and their water carriers in the press are like people on a boat that is drifting off to sea, but are convinced that it's the land that's moving, not them."
<url excised so the post won't get autodeleted, if you want to see the links, see the version of this post I've posted on the BitChute version of this vid.>
I would love to leave politics mostly alone. But politics won't leave me alone.
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If you believe that freedom of speech is a fundamental human right, as the founders of our country and the authors and ratifiers of our Constitution did, then a law abridging that freedom is despotic and illegitimate. Strictly speaking, Musk has not broken a law, anyway. He refused to submit to judicial blackmail. If the law of the land trumps human rights, then we need to apologize to the Nuremberg defendants. The executors of the Final Solution were obeying local law. History has harshly judged those who appeased tyrannous regimes, and rightly so. I don't know what that "act differently in different countries" crack is supposed to mean. Musk championed free speech and not only defied but called out the US government for censorship FIRST, before Brazil. Remember the "Twitter files"? And he also defied the British government threats against him. He is consistent in all countries. A champion of the people's rights, voice, and power.
The side that seeks to settle a dispute of fact by the use of power is the obscurantist side, every time. That's how you know you're the bad guy.
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jzherfph chsinkkle "The bible, like the quran, is mideast TRASH." [sic]
Protestantism created the modern libertarian west. We (Protestants) implemented religious freedom, political freedom, academic freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press FIRST, and thus caused the academic, scientific, technological, and material progress that followed; and most of the rest of the world hasn't caught up with it yet. John 8:32 "You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
"I want all three monotheisms incinerated."
So did Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro and every other authoritarian regressive atheist jerk in history.
"You need a book???"
The Bible does clarify some moral laws, but most reasonable people know without it that there is a moral standard and that they fall short of it. The Bible tells you what to do about it.
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Part of hit radio's listenability reduction is the lower quality of the music generally. But part of it is the narrowing of the format. Regardless of the genre (pop, rock, country) modern stations have such a narrow format for how old a song can be, and such a strict genre restriction, that the same few songs keep getting played over and over again. This may be acceptable for the target audience if it is short trip auto commuters. But certainly for trying to get through a night shift in a factory, or any other extended play scenario, this drives anyone with higher than a room temperature IQ up a wall.
This decline for most stations started in the 70s. I can remember when I was little (in the 60s), EVERY music station played "golden oldies" every once in a while and the standard of longevity of what was considered a relatively modern song was much greater. The stations were not generally as purist restrictive in terms of genre. Few made much of the distinction between rock and pop and folk in the pop stations and C&W and bluegrass and maybe even southern gospel on the country stations, and a few genre bending artists, like John Denver, got play on both sides.
Of course, nowadays oldies stations have a much larger body of work to choose from than hit stations, even if they restrict themselves to one or two decades. But even then, many miss the mark in terms of variety. My favorite oldies format is one that draws from the most decades and every hour pulls in something I haven't heard in years, and once a day or so pulls out something I've never heard before. Even though such a station will often play something I don't like as much, that is a price I am willing to pay for variety. All too many station programmers today couldn't parse the phrase "no repeat workday" to save their lives.
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@IndigoShade "Known" by whom? Here is the Nazi party platform:
/Quote:
The Program of the German Workers’ Party is a program for our time.
The leadership rejects the establishment of new aims after those set out in the Program have been achieved, for the sole purpose of making it possible for the Party to continue to exist as the result of the artificially stimulated dissatisfaction of the masses.
1. We demand the uniting of all Germans within one Greater Germany, on the basis of the right to self-determination of nations.
2. We demand equal rights for the German people (Volk) with respect to other nations, and the annulment of the peace treaty of Versailles and St. Germain.
3. We demand land and soil (Colonies) to feed our People and settle our excess population.
4. Only Nationals (Volksgenossen) can be Citizens of the State. Only persons of German blood can be Nationals, regardless of religious affiliation. No Jew can therefore be a German National.
5. Any person who is not a Citizen will be able to live in Germany only as a guest and must be subject to legislation for Aliens.
6. Only a Citizen is entitled to decide the leadership and laws of the State. We therefore demand that only Citizens may hold public office, regardless of whether it is a national, state or local office.
We oppose the corrupting parliamentary custom of making party considerations, and not character and ability, the criterion for appointments to official positions.
7. We demand that the State make it its duty to provide opportunities of employment first of all for its own Citizens. If it is not possible to maintain the entire population of the State, then foreign nationals (non-Citizens) are to be expelled from the Reich.
8. Any further immigration of non-Germans is to be prevented. We demand that all non-Germans who entered Germany after August 2, 1914, be forced to leave the Reich without delay.
9. All German Citizens must have equal rights and duties.
10. It must be the first duty of every Citizen to carry out intellectual or physical work. Individual activity must not be harmful to the public interest and must be pursued within the framework of the community and for the general good.
We therefore demand:
11. The abolition of all income obtained without labor or effort.
Breaking the Servitude of Interest.
12. In view of the tremendous sacrifices in property and blood demanded of the nation by every war, personal gain from the war must be termed a crime against the nation. We therefore demand the total confiscation of all war profits.
13. We demand the nationalization of all enterprises (already) converted into corporations (trusts).
14. We demand profit-sharing in large enterprises.
15. We demand the large-scale development of old-age pension schemes.
16. We demand the creation and maintenance of a sound middle class; the immediate communalization of the large department stores, which are to be leased at low rates to small tradesmen. We demand the most careful consideration for the owners of small businesses in orders placed by national, state, or community authorities.
17. We demand land reform in accordance with our national needs and a law for expropriation without compensation of land for public purposes. Abolition of ground rent and prevention of all speculation in land.
18. We demand ruthless battle against those who harm the common good by their activities. Persons committing base crimes against the People, usurers, profiteers, etc., are to be punished by death without regard to religion or race.
19. We demand the replacement of Roman Law, which serves a materialistic World Order, by German Law.
20. In order to make higher education – and thereby entry into leading positions – available to every able and industrious German, the State must provide a thorough restructuring of our entire public educational system. The courses of study at all educational institutions are to be adjusted to meet the requirements of practical life. Understanding of the concept of the State must be achieved through the schools (teaching of civics) at the earliest age at which it can be grasped. We demand the education at the public expense of specially gifted children of poor parents, without regard to the latters’ position or occupation.
21. The State must raise the level of national health by means of mother-and-child care, the banning of juvenile labor, achievements of physical fitness through legislation for compulsory gymnastics and sports, and maximum support for all organizations providing physical training for young people.
22. We demand the abolition of hireling troops and the creation of a national army.
23. We demand laws to fight against deliberate political lies and their dissemination by the press. In order to make it possible to create a German press, we demand:
a) all editors and editorial employees of newspapers appearing in the German language must be German by race;
b) non-German newspapers require express permission from the State for their publication. They may not be printed in the German language;
c) any financial participation in a German newspaper or influence on such a paper is to be forbidden by law to non-Germans and the penalty for any breach of this law will be the closing of the newspaper in question, as well as the immediate expulsion from the Reich of the non-Germans involved.
Newspapers which violate the public interest are to be banned. We demand laws against trends in art and literature which have a destructive effect on our national life, and the suppression of performances that offend against the above requirements.
24. We demand freedom for all religious denominations, provided that they do not endanger the existence of the State or offend the concepts of decency and morality of the Germanic race.
The Party as such stands for positive Christianity, without associating itself with any particular denomination. It fights against the Jewish-materialistic spirit within and around us, and is convinced that a permanent revival of our nation can be achieved only from within, on the basis of: Public Interest before Private Interest.
25. To carry out all the above we demand: the creation of a strong central authority in the Reich. Unquestioned authority by the political central Parliament over the entire Reich and over its organizations in general. The establishment of trade and professional organizations to enforce the Reich basic laws in the individual states.
The Party leadership promises to take an uncompromising stand, at the cost of their own lives if need be, on the enforcement of the above points.
Munich, Germany
February 24, 1920.
//END QUOTE
Replace every instance of "Jew" with "Wall Street bankers" and you have the new radical Democrat party platform. No "free market" planks here.
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@faithingood3863 "the US wasn't even at war with Nazi Germany until the Soviets were already pushing back on all fronts."
False. The US declared war on December 11, 1941. The turning point of Germany's eastern front, prior to which Germany was totally on the offensive was the Battle of Stalingrad (23 August 1942 - 2 February 1943). By the time the Battle of Stalingrad had even begun, the US was already shipping aid in buld to the Soviet Union, mostly food a first, but constantly trucks and fuel, shipped in by Anglo-American convoys fighting through the German attempt at blockade. The defenders of Stalingrad almost starved as it was, and would certainly have starved without that aid.
By the time the USSR had turned to the offensive, The US had been supplying, and continued to supply, Sherman tanks in vast numbers to all the allies including the Soviet Union. The UK also supplied the USSR with some tanks. The US and the UK also supplied the Soviets with combat and logistics aircraft. 90% of the trucks supporting the Soviet offensive logistical effort were Studebaker trucks shipped in from US factories, and the bulk of the fuel was from the US as well. Without that aid the Soviet offensive would not have been possible.
Shortly after the US declaration of war, the US sent ground forces to aid the British effort to push the Axis powers out of Northern Africa. In November of 1942, the US opened an African front of its own in Operation Torch. The Anglo-American offensive pushed the Axis out of Africa, and deprived them of their main source of oil. This began well before the end of the Stalingrad battle and the start of the Soviet offensive, and paved the way for the subsequent Anglo-American invasions of Sicily and Italy, which took Italy out of the war.
Moreover, any analysis of the USSRs contribution to the allied war effort is incomplete without factoring in their prior contribution to the Axis war effort. The first Soviet intervention in events was its joint operation with the Reich in the conquest of Poland, accompanied by the non-aggression pact between the USSR and Nazi Germany. Not only that, but the USSR was supporting the Reich with its propaganda and vast amounts of material aid shipped across Poland by rail. While the US was already becoming the Arsenal of Democracy by sending material aid to the UK prior to the declaration of war, the USSR was simultaneously becoming the Arsenal of Despotism by sending material aid to Hitler. The courage of the Soviet peoples in the latter part of the war was commendable, but a complete analysis of the net Soviet contribution to the war must take into account that the problem the USSR helped solve was largely a problem they helped create.
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+ ReformedThe
"You realize the god claim is the exact same as the multiverse theory?"
You are confused. The existence of a creator (in the minimal sense of something that creates) is established by the big bang. Cosmic fine tuning establishes that the creator is more like a mind than like anything else. No unnecessary assumptions are entailed in this construction. The multiverse is a speculative attempt to circumvent cosmic fine tuning. It involves an assumption of whole universes which have not been and cannot be observed. It is not a scientific theory. Incidentally, they were arguing over whether the multiverse was infinite. It does not need to be infinite to circumvent cosmic fine tuning, just really big.
As for the simulation hypothesis, you really don't want to go there. You don't believe in God, but you do believe in a entity of supreme intelligence outside of our time and space which designed and implemented our universe, who is able to see everything and can change details at will?
Now about materialism. The defining rule of materialism is that there is nothing outside space/time/matter/physics that can affect it. Already challenged by the big bang, and by the existence of consciousness, (the notion that physics supports a subjective observer as an epiphenomenon is a category error, a scientistic superstition), note that the assumptions of the simulation hypothesis contradict the assumptions of materialism. The simulation hypothesis is by definition the assertion that something outside our physics/time/matter/space/energy DOES exist and CAN effect us. If you assert that the host reality is materialistic, that does you no good. Atheists have been using their materialistic dogma against miracles, for example. If materialism does not apply to OUR universe, then that objection falls flat.
Let's cut to the chase folks. The simulation hypothesis IS THEISM, expressed in the language of data processing rather than that of philosophy or religion.
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@frankhoffman3566
I didn't mention quantum physics. I know theism today is commonly equated with the big 3 theistic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, because those are the main theistic religions that have adherents today. But the TERM also applies to "god" in the sense of the old Graeco-Roman or Norse pantheons, a super-human being (even if not infinite) outside the limitations of humanity. A god, at least in that sense, including superhuman intelligence, is a minimal requirement for the simulation hypothesis. The hypothesis, and the term theism, BOTH cover the same range from the Tetragrammaton to "Thor, are you still playing that thing?"
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@SponsoredbyPfizer "How much is mossad paying you for this?"
@osamudazai6435 "I'm curious how much I got paid to make this video"
@osamudazai6435 "bro got big paid for this video "
This is pure Bulverism. It's what they teach students today in school instead of critical thinking. Instead of addressing your opponents data and arguments, you invoke an irrational or ignoble MOTIVE for his statements to give yourself and your readers an excuse to dismiss his arguments without consideration.
Quote from Bulverism by C. S. Lewis:
You must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong. The modern method is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became so silly.
In the course of the last fifteen years I have found this vice so common that I have had to invent a name for it. I call it "Bulverism". Some day I am going to write the biography of its imaginary inventor, Ezekiel Bulver, whose destiny was determined at the age of five when he heard his mother say to his father — who had been maintaining that two sides of a triangle were together greater than a third — "Oh you say that because you are a man." "At that moment", E. Bulver assures us, "there flashed across my opening mind the great truth that refutation is no necessary part of argument. Assume that your opponent is wrong, and explain his error, and the world will be at your feet. Attempt to prove that he is wrong or (worse still) try to find out whether he is wrong or right, and the natural dynamism of our age will thrust you to the wall." That is how Bulver became one of the makers of the Twentieth Century.
Suppose I think, after doing my accounts, that I have a large balance at the bank. And suppose you want to find out whether this belief of mine is "wishful thinking." You can never come to any conclusion by examining my psychological condition. Your only chance of finding out is to sit down and work through the sum yourself. When you have checked my figures, then, and then only, will you know whether I have that balance or not. If you find my arithmetic correct, then no amount of vapouring about my psychological condition can be anything but a waste of time. If you find my arithmetic wrong, then it may be relevant to explain psychologically how I came to be so bad at my arithmetic, and the doctrine of the concealed wish will become relevant — but only after you have yourself done the sum and discovered me to be wrong on purely arithmetical grounds. It is the same with all thinking and all systems of thought. If you try to find out which are tainted by speculating about the wishes of the thinkers, you are merely making a fool of yourself. You must first find out on purely logical grounds which of them do, in fact, break down as arguments. Afterwards, if you like, go on and discover the psychological causes of the error.
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@Royal.Grand.Majesty "You think Palestinians are fighting because of their ego?"
I think the Palestinians are fighting because of the mandates of their religion reinforced by the ambitions and propaganda of their despotic leaders. As for a place in the Koran or the hadith that once mentions that you can become a martyr by killing people. for specifically that, we have:
Koran 4:74 "Let those fight in the way of Allah who sell the life of this world for the other. Whoso fighteth in the way of Allah, be he slain or be he victorious, on him We shall bestow a vast reward." The martyrs of Islam are unlike the early Christians, who were led meekly to the slaughter. These Muslims are killed in battle as they attempt to inflict death and destruction for the cause of Allah. This is the theological basis for today's suicide bombers. The word martyr is not used in this passage, but a death richly rewarded by God is pretty much the definition of martyrdom.
Similarly,
Sahih Bukhari 55:44 A man came to Allah's Apostle and said, "Instruct me as to such a deed as equals Jihad (in reward)." He replied, "I do not find such a deed."
As for injunctions to violence toward kaffir, apostates, and hypocrites, pretty much throughout:
Koran 2:191-193
2:216
3:151
4:76
4:89
4:95 Not equal are those of the believers who sit (at home), except those who are disabled (by injury or are blind or lame, etc.), and those who strive hard and fight in the Cause of Allah with their wealth and their lives. Allah has preferred in grades those who strive hard and fight with their wealth and their lives above those who sit (at home).Unto each, Allah has promised good (Paradise), but Allah has preferred those who strive hard and fight, above those who sit (at home) by a huge reward " This passage criticizes "peaceful" Muslims who do not join in the violence, letting them know that they are less worthy in Allah's eyes. It also demolishes the modern myth that "Jihad" doesn't mean holy war in the Quran, but rather a spiritual struggle. Not only is this Arabic word (mujahiduna) used in this passage, but it is clearly not referring to anything spiritual, since the physically disabled are given exemption. (The Hadith reveals the context of the passage to be in response to a blind man's protest that he is unable to engage in Jihad, which would not make sense if it meant an internal struggle)
This is one of the references of the "fighting with money" escape clauses for the rich which I referenced in my earlier post.
4:104
8:12
8:39
8:67
8:59-60
9:5
9:14
9:20 Those who believe, and have left their homes and striven with their wealth and their lives in Allah's way are of much greater worth in Allah's sight. These are they who are triumphant." The Arabic word interpreted as "striving" in this verse is the same root as "Jihad". The context is obviously holy war.
9:29
9:38-39
9:41
9:73
9:88
9:111
9:123
33:60-62
47:3-4
47:35
48:17
48:29
61:4
66:9
Sahih Bukhari 52:117
52:220
52:256
Abu Dawud 14:2526, 2527
And many more.
"Israel's only 'claim' to the land from thousands of years ago, comes from their 'Holy Texts'."
This is blatantly false. It is common knowledge and could be established from Roman records alone that the Jews were dwelling in Judea when the Romans came, which was before year 1 CE, and continuous Jewish presence in the area ever since is a matter of historical record. Archaeological finds show Hebrew language inscriptions, Jewish religious symbols, and signs of kosher dietary practices centuries before the Babylonian exile. Moreover, there is no reason to first order to doubt the testimony of the Hebrew scriptures on the question.
"scholars world-wide who've studied and researched these 'Holy Texts' have concluded in various reports that these 'Holy Texts' were modified and iterated upon, throughout the ages, where-by the original words of God, is in fact long lost."
Citation required. I have studied this matter in college and I doubt you would find a single professor in a major university in a relevant field, religious or secular, who would endorse your statement as you wrote it.
"Don't forget the same 'Holy Texts' also mentioned the 'Philistines', surely it couldn't possibly be referring to the Natives of the land, right?"
Yes, the Philistines were in the land before the Israelites. But they aren't around today to press a claim. What few that weren't wiped out by Israel during the conquests of Joshua, and David, and many skirmishes in between were dispersed and assimilated by the Assyrians with the exception of the holdouts in Tyre, who were destroyed by Alexander the Great. The inhabitants of Gaza are ethnic Egyptians and the "Palestinians of the West Bank" are Idumeans, with some intermingling with their Bedouin conquerors. (New Testament Idumans, Old Testament Edomites from beyond the Jordan).
"the world isn't run based on Religion, but on Laws, Rules and Regulations."
First of all, the most just nations are nations of laws, not of men. But the international order is run by realpolitic and force. The UN and the international courts are dominated by despots with no regard for justice.
The original British "Mandate for Palestine" was an international agreement for the UK to establish a homeland for the Jews, originally in all of what is now Israel and Jordan. The UK changed the deal unilaterally to divide it between an "Arab" state, Jordan, and a Jewish state. The Jews agreed to the division, the Arabs did not. The UK was dragging their feet on the completion of the Mandate, because they found it strategically advantageous to militarily invest and administer the Levant. So they brought in and established a radical Nazi sympathizer "Grand Mufti" in Jerusalem, who rejected the establishment of a Jewish state. For some time, Jews had been immigrating and buying land in the Mandate area, and creating economic opportunities which drew in Arab immigration. The British Mandate authority further reduced the size of the projected Jewish state to a fraction of the Jewish portion. The Jews agreed to the partition, the Arabs did not.
When the British left in 1948 the Jews declared the establishment of the State of Israel on the basis of the Mandate Charter and the agreement with the British who administered the Mandate, and to provide for self defense against hostile neighbors, namely all the surrounding Arab states, which immediately attacked the fledgling state. The invading nations warned the Arab population in Israel to leave so they could kill the Jews without killing Arabs. Many did.
To almost everyone's surprise, Israel won. They had overrun the West Bank in pursuit, but gave it back in peace negotiations. It was later annexed in a subsequent war. Ever since, Jews have found living in Arab countries increasingly dangerous and impossible and have been forced to leave with only what they could carry.
There is no Israeli in Israel living on land which was expropriated from it's private owner by Israel. They are living on land they BOUGHT. Israel upholds private property rights and the rule of law, just the same as other nations in the Western civilizational tradition. For centuries in Islamic ruled lands, property "rights" of "dhimis" (Jews and Christians) were subject to arbitrary abbrogation. Muslims think this is their right. That is part of the program, to seize the purchased property of non-Muslims along with improvements without compensation.
In the US and most Western nations the fount of sovereign legitimacy is the "consent of the governed". Unlike any other polity in the region, the government of Israel is democratically elected. Arab, Muslim, Christian, and atheist citizens in Israel have full rights including the vote, which is unique in the region. Foreigners traveling in Israel have full protection of Israeli law which is not afforded to natives in neighboring nations.
The "Palestinian problem" is an artifact of a colonial power trying to hold on to control. The Mandate administration brought in and cultivated a criminal element to serve their private interest and subvert the Mandate. The Jews aren't squatters, the Palestinians are. There is no consistent standard whereby the Palestinians are entitled to sovereignty, and the Israelis are not, and the Palestinians won't negotiate to form a compromise which allows for the existence of Israel.
At the end of WW2, disputed and other territories part of Germany and Japan before the war. were transferred to other polities. It is an established principle that the aggressor who tries to seize territory can be punished by losing territory instead when he loses.
In every sense and category, the anti-Israel zealots apply an unequal standard against her. By priority, by international law, by natural law principle, by conquest, by democratic vote, by every standard which has ever historically been recognized to convey title, Israel's current borders are legitimate. The counter-narrative is a construct of leftist enmity for the West which entails an alliance with the enemies of the West. The left has been an enemy of Israel ever since the 1960s when the Soviet Union sided with Israel's enemies. Israel's sovereignty is legitimate, Israel's survival is legitimate, and there cannot be a two state solution until Palestinians are willing to accept a two-state solution.
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I don't think you've quite learned the fundamental lesson of these revelations. Stop building bureaucratic fiefdoms. Anything that CAN be done outside of government should never be done inside government, and this applies more strongly to large countries than small ones. Every task, agency, employee, title, and dollar that's added to the federal government makes it more unwieldy and harder to manage or police, means each task gets done less efficiently, and makes the leviathan more dangerous.
Much is made of the tax, inflation, and debt burden of all of this spending, and the point is well taken. But the spending his actually harmful APART from the cost. Much of the damage in loss of freedom, corruption, dependency, and centralization of power would still amount to over half the harm even if the whole government were funded by well meaning space aliens. The SPENDING ITSELF, the POWER, is bad, and merely worse because it's our money!
The sole, indispensable function of government is to protect us from force or fraud; to FORCE folk to mind their own business, because left to themselves THEY WILL NOT! Any function beyond this minimum becomes a vehicle for folk to NOT mind their business, and defeats the whole purpose of government.
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@hi-rq1el "Ad0lf H1tler October 27th, 1928"
Hitler wasn't just a murderer, he was a liar. It is true that Hitler when he was a politician seeking office expressed certain pro-Christian statements. But in his private remarks to his officials he made it clear where he really stood as has been revealed by seized Nazi government documents and the notes of an author who planned to publish a collection of Hitler's remarks at the dinner table.
Dr Zoellner and [Catholic Bishop of Munster] Count Galen have tried to make clear to me that Christianity consists in faith in Christ as the son of God. That makes me laugh... No, Christianity is not dependent upon the Apostle's Creed... True Christianity is represented by the party, and the German people are now called by the party and especially the Fuehrer to a real Christianity... the Fuehrer is the herald of a new revelation."
— Hans Kerrl, Nazi Minister for Church Affairs, 1937
During the war Alfred Rosenberg formulated a thirty-point program for the National Reich Church, which included:
The National Reich Church claims exclusive right and control over all Churches.
The National Church is determined to exterminate foreign Christian faiths imported into Germany in the ill-omened year 800.
The National Church demands immediate cessation of the publishing and dissemination of the Bible.
The National Church will clear away from its altars all Crucifixes, Bibles, and pictures of Saints.
On the altars there must be nothing but "Mein Kampf" and to the left of the altar a sword.
Prior to the Reichstag vote for the Enabling Act under which Hitler gained legislative powers with which he went on to permanently dismantle the Weimar Republic, Hitler promised the Reichstag on 23 March 1933, that he would not interfere with the rights of the churches. However, with power secured in Germany, Hitler quickly broke this promise. Various historians have written that the goal of the Nazi Kirchenkampf (Church Struggle) entailed not only ideological struggle, but ultimately the eradication of the Churches. However, leading Nazis varied in the importance they attached to the Church Struggle.
William Shirer wrote that "under the leadership of Rosenberg, Bormann and Himmler, who were backed by Hitler, the Nazi regime intended to destroy Christianity in Germany, if it could, and substitute the old paganism of the early tribal Germanic gods and the new paganism of the Nazi extremists." During a speech on 27 October 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt revealed evidence of Hitler's plan to abolish all religions in Germany, declaring:
Your government has in its possession another document, made in Germany by Hitler’s Government… It is a plan to abolish all existing religions—Catholic, Protestant, Mohammedan, Hindu, Buddhist, and Jewish alike. The property of all churches will be seized by the Reich and its puppets. The cross and all other symbols of religion are to be forbidden. The clergy are to be forever liquidated, silenced under penalty of the concentration camps, where even now so many fearless men are being tortured because they have placed God above Hitler.
Hitler himself possessed radical instincts in relation to the continuing conflict with the Catholic and Protestant Churches in Germany. Though he occasionally spoke of wanting to delay the Church struggle and was prepared to restrain his anti-clericalism out of political considerations, his "own inflammatory comments gave his immediate underlings all the license they needed to turn up the heat in the 'Church Struggle, confident that they were 'working towards the Fuhrer'". According to the Goebbels Diaries, Hitler hated Christianity. In an 8 April 1941 entry, Goebbels wrote "He hates Christianity, because it has crippled all that is noble in humanity."
In Bullock's assessment, though raised a Catholic, Hitler "believed neither in God nor in conscience", retained some regard for the organizational power of Catholicism, but had contempt for its central teachings, which he said, if taken to their conclusion, "would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure". (Bullock wrote.)
In Hitler's eyes, Christianity was a religion fit only for slaves; he detested its ethics in particular. Its teaching, he declared, was a rebellion against the natural law of selection by struggle and the survival of the fittest.
— Extract from Hitler: A Study in Tyranny, by Alan Bullock
Writing for Yad Vashem, the historian Michael Phayer wrote that by the latter 1930s, church officials knew that the long-term aim of Hitler was the "total elimination of Catholicism and of the Christian religion", but that given the prominence of Christianity in Germany, this was necessarily a long-term goal. According to Bullock, Hitler intended to destroy the influence of the Christian churches in Germany after the war. In his memoirs, Hitler's chief architect Albert Speer recalled that when drafting his plans for the "new Berlin", he consulted Protestant and Catholic authorities, but was "curtly informed" by Hitler's private secretary Martin Bormann that churches were not to receive building sites. Kershaw wrote that, in Hitler's scheme for the Germanization of Eastern Europe, he made clear that there would be "no place in this utopia for the Christian Churches'.
Geoffrey Blainey wrote that Hitler and his Fascist ally Mussolini were atheists. "The aggressive spread of atheism in the Soviet Union alarmed many German Christians", wrote Blainey, and with the Nazis becoming the main opponent of Communism in Germany: "[Hitler] himself saw Christianity as a temporary ally, for in his opinion 'one is either a Christian or a German'. To be both was impossible. Nazism itself was a religion, a pagan religion, and Hitler was its high priest... Its high altar [was] Germany itself and the German people, their soil and forests and language and traditions". Nonetheless, a number of early confidants of Hitler detailed the Führer's complete lack of religious belief. One close confidant, Otto Strasser, disclosed in his 1940 book, Hitler and I, that Hitler was a true disbeliever, succinctly stating: Hitler is an atheist.
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That was not even a proper closed cycle environment experiment. It was some over budgeted half-assed hippie environmentalist boondoggle. For them, going nuts was a short trip. It in no way had anything to do with developing closed-cycle life support for space exploration. The O2 was being absorbed by the "potting plant" type soil, that and the cockroaches, both of which they insisted on importing for the experiment, which was supposed to be the Earth's biosphere in miniature, complete with different environments (desert, tundra, etc). Hence the name, Biosphere 2. With proper cleaning, the facility might be useful for some serious research. Right now it's a tourist trap.
@dazza2350
"just give them some way to access the internet"
The Internet was a very new thing back then. I don't even know if Oracle, Arizona had dialup then. If you are going to simulate a Moon or a Mars base, psychology and all, you would have to introduce an artificial signal delay
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@Roarmeister2
Yes, and we do underplay the role propaganda had during WW2 in particular (I know, different war)
“Enemy submarines are to be called U-Boats. The term submarine is to be reserved for Allied under water vessels. U-Boats are those dastardly villains who sink our ships, while submarines are those gallant and noble craft which sink theirs.”
― Winston S. Churchill
Back then, US journalists (for example) were full in for the war in a way they have been for no war since. Actually, as much as I favor the WW2 Allied cause, that aspect WAS kinda creepy. When Roosevelt interred Japanese Americans, there wasn't a peep of protest from the press. The only opposition to this in his administration was from the Republican holdover, J. Edgar Hoover. In the interest of wartime solidarity, he did not make a public stink, but he insisted that the later to be declassified public record state that he was firmly of the opinion that their constitutional rights were violated by the measure.
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Absolutely. Republicans are pretty much where they were in 1980. The Democrats have moved way to the left. I can demonstrate this:
The biggest thing, of course, is that a whole host of radical new issues have appeared out of the blue. Indoctrinating preadolescent children in dangerous sexual practices that will leave them more vulnerable to exploitation by sexual predators and a lucrative industry of quack elective drugs and procedures which will leave them impotent, frigid, and sterile; and dependent on continual, extra, and expensive medical care just to stay alive. Mainstreaming of censorship and political slander and violence. Mobilization of the "law enforcement" apparatus to suppress political dissent. Corporate and academic departments devoted to sequestration and punishment of political views. Mandatory Orwellian "struggle sessions" indoctrinating and enforcing the party line. Most of these things were not even being advocated quite recently, much less done. In the field of race relations, Democrats are utterly abandoning the ideal of the colorblind society in favor of "positive racism" and segregation:
<url excised so the post won't get autodeleted, if you want to see the links, see the version of this post I've posted on the BitChute version of this vid.>
But if you want to quantify the drastic leftward shift of the Democrat party, the easiest thing to graph and track is the shift in registered party members' views on issues that have actually existed long enough to be tracked over time. I can remember when free speech was not a partizan issue. Neither was support for Israel. Dems used to be, if anything, more hawkish about immigration control than Republicans. As recently as Obama's first presidential run, the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman (back when we could all agree on what those terms meant) was a plank in the DEMOCRAT party platform. Republicans haven't moved much since the 1980s when the Reagan revolution reversed the simultaneous double-digit inflation and unemployment and "national malaise" (Carter's phrase). The Democrats' leftward movement on a number of the same issues over time is a verifiable and quantifiable fact, as show in the charts and figures in these articles:
"Democrats and their water carriers in the press are like people on a boat that is drifting off to sea, but are convinced that it's the land that's moving, not them."
<url excised so the post won't get autodeleted, if you want to see the links, see the version of this post I've posted on the BitChute version of this vid.>
I would love to leave politics mostly alone. But politics won't leave me alone.
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So let's make the perfect the enemy of the good, right? I'm not hearing a solution. You decry the plastic liner in aluminum cans as if the recyclers carefully pealed it off and dumped it into the ocean. Rather it gets burned as the aluminum is melted, as unrecyclable plastic used to be and should be. As for the energy required to process bauxite into aluminum, most of that processing of ore takes place in Scandinavian countries with abundant, cheap, clean hydroelectric power. Fossil fuels and even nuclear can't compete. I drink tap water myself, and make coffee and tea with it, but I'm not such a Karen as to want to prohibit products I don't use. In a world chock full of evil, to vilify companies for innocently filling an innocent demand is morally obtuse.
And plastic waste is a problem precisely because we stopped burning trash. It is a problem naive environmentalists caused. Moreover the plastic in oceans doesn't come from landfills, but from litter. As for refillable containers, well and good in principle, but you're limiting their life if the mouth of the container isn't big enough to stick your hand down in it so you can wash it. This would be obvious to anybody who tries to use such a container, which makes me suspicious of anybody who claims to use the ones you show for the purpose claimed. If you've been trying to use them for any length of time, you're touting them not to improve the situation, but to virtue signal.
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What you're calling "polarization" is totally Democrats moving left. Republicans are pretty much where they were in 1980. The Democrats have moved way to the left. I can demonstrate this:
The biggest thing, of course, is that a whole host of radical new issues have appeared out of the blue. Indoctrinating preadolescent children in dangerous sexual practices that will leave them more vulnerable to exploitation by sexual predators and a lucrative industry of quack elective drugs and procedures which will leave them impotent, frigid, and sterile; and dependent on continual, extra, and expensive medical care just to stay alive. Mainstreaming of censorship and political slander and violence. Mobilization of the "law enforcement" apparatus to suppress political dissent. Corporate and academic departments devoted to sequestration and punishment of political views. Mandatory Orwellian "struggle sessions" indoctrinating and enforcing the party line. Most of these things were not even being advocated quite recently, much less done. In the field of race relations, Democrats are utterly abandoning the ideal of the colorblind society in favor of "positive racism" and segregation:
<url excised so the post won't get autodeleted, if you want to see the links, see the version of this post I've posted on the BitChute version of this vid.>
But if you want to quantify the drastic leftward shift of the Democrat party, the easiest thing to graph and track is the shift in registered party members' views on issues that have actually existed long enough to be tracked over time. I can remember when free speech was not a partizan issue. Neither was support for Israel. Dems used to be, if anything, more hawkish about immigration control than Republicans. As recently as Obama's first presidential run, the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman (back when we could all agree on what those terms meant) was a plank in the DEMOCRAT party platform. Republicans haven't moved much since the 1980s when the Reagan revolution reversed the simultaneous double-digit inflation and unemployment and "national malaise" (Carter's phrase). The Democrats' leftward movement on a number of the same issues over time is a verifiable and quantifiable fact, as show in the charts and figures in these articles:
"Democrats and their water carriers in the press are like people on a boat that is drifting off to sea, but are convinced that it's the land that's moving, not them."
<url excised so the post won't get autodeleted, if you want to see the links, see the version of this post I've posted on the BitChute version of this vid.>
I would love to leave politics mostly alone. But politics won't leave me alone.
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@philgiglio7922
Astronaut and Cosmonaut fatalities during spaceflight:
18
Astronaut and Cosmonaut fatalities during training and equipment testing:
13
Non-Astronaut/Cosmonaut fatalities associated with spaceflight:
Fatalities caused by rocket explosions:
196
Other non-astronaut/cosmonaut fatalities:
28
Caveats:
1. This includes all nations space programs, not just US and USSR/Russia.
2. The non-astronaut figures include deaths associated with unmanned space missions.
3. The USSR and China figures are the respective government figures, and frankly, communist governments lie a lot. The figures are probably higher for their incidents (in some cases there is independent evidence of this), and some incidents probably were not reported.
4. "Not included are accidents or incidents associated with intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) tests, unmanned space flights not resulting in fatality or serious injury, or Soviet or German rocket-powered aircraft projects of World War II. Also not included are alleged unreported Soviet space accidents" (from article)
(I had to remove the url citation from this to make sure the channel rules wouldn't auto-shadow-delete it.)
Accidents, including fatalities, have always been associated with:
1. construction.
2. transportation.
3. industrial activity
4. exploration.
5. cutting edge technological programs
and of course,
6. space travel, which incorporates all of the above.
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2 person cars are a solution for town driving, but for driving on the highway, small subcompacts tend to be LESS efficient on the highway than a smallish 4-door sedan, because it is harder to make them conform to the aerodynamically ideal teardrop shape. Aerodynamics are also the main reason why "motorcycles are not any where near the efficiency that a Honda Civic or Honda City gives in terms of its weight to fuel efficiency ratio", not motor efficiency. Weight is the dominant factor in city driving (accelerating and decelerating mass), but on the highway it's all about aerodynamics.
When you are considering just the efficiency of motorcycle engines, there is the fact that they are usually air cooled, and spend much less of their use cycle operating at the ideal temperature than a water cooled engine, which, due to the thermostat, turns off the cooling system when not needed.
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@giogiovanni4287
$5 for an apple and I don't get disenfranchised by imported Democrats, where do I sign?! (Oh, I already did.) In point of fact, the legitimate will of the people is already conventionally expressed by the immigration laws as they exist. Why is it every other contraband issue, like Marijuana, the debate is about whether to change the law, but on this one the debate is on whether to support lawlessness? (answer: Only illegal immigration gives Democrats their slaves back)
And don't say that Americans won't do agricultural work, it's another form of entry level employment for rural youth, like fast food places are for cities. In my agricultural region the cash crop isn't fruits and vegetables, but before I turned 18 and got my first factory job, I cut corn out of beans and vise versa, loaded bails of hay and straw on the hay wagon and into the barn, detassled corn and such things, I also washed dishes and cleaned floors for work/study at college. Most of these jobs were exempted by category from minimum wage laws, but I bet I got more, compensating for inflation, than the illegals are getting as an hourly wage.
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@giogiovanni4287
Current immigration laws FAVOR applicants from 3rd world countries, except for people who have talents in demand, or, yes, money, thanks to selection quotas from a bill sponsored by Ted Kennedy in the Immigration act of 1965. The exceptions for talent and money are, of course, to benefit US, not to discriminate against the poor and the incompetent. The waiting list for Mexicans is bound to be greater than most of the rest of the world, for geographic reasons, and Canada offers better economic and social opportunities than Mexico, so there is less reason to leave.
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@zackbobby5550 "the Democratic party is Centrist, not Left."
The Republican party is where it has been for decades. Since it majority voted for all the relevant civil rights bills. The Democrats have moved left and this is an objective verifiable fact. The biggest thing, of course, is that a whole host of radical new issues have appeared out of the blue. Indoctrinating preadolescent children in dangerous sexual practices that will leave them more vulnerable to exploitation by sexual predators and a lucrative industry of quack elective drugs and procedures which will leave them impotent, frigid, and sterile; and dependent on continual, extra, and expensive medical care just to stay alive. Mainstreaming of censorship and political slander and violence. Mobilization of the "law enforcement" apparatus to suppress political dissent. Corporate and academic departments devoted to sequestration and punishment of political views. Mandatory Orwellian "struggle sessions" indoctrinating and enforcing the party line. Most of these things were not even being advocated quite recently, much less done. In the field of race relations, Democrats are utterly abandoning the ideal of the colorblind society in favor of "positive racism" and segregation:
https://www.newsweek.com/black-students-only-housing-washington-university-1633265
https://housing.wwu.edu/black-affinity-housing
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/american-colleges-segregated-housing-graduation-ceremonies/
But if you want to quantify the drastic leftward shift of the Democrat party, the easiest thing to graph and track is the shift in registered party members' views on issues that have actually existed long enough to be tracked over time. I can remember when free speech was not a partizan issue. Neither was support for Israel. Dems used to be, if anything, more hawkish about immigration control than Republicans. As recently as Obama's first presidential run, the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman (back when we could all agree on what those terms meant) was a plank in the DEMOCRAT party platform. Republicans haven't moved much since the 1980s when the Reagan revolution reversed the simultaneous double-digit inflation and unemployment and "national malaise" (Carter's phrase). The Democrats' leftward movement on a number of the same issues over time is a verifiable and quantifiable fact, as show in the charts and figures in these articles:
"Democrats and their water carriers in the press are like people on a boat that is drifting off to sea, but are convinced that it's the land that's moving, not them."
https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/pew-research-center-study-shows-that-democrats-have-shifted-to-the-extreme-left/
https://theweek.com/democrats/1002266/democrats-have-moved-further-left-than-republicans-have-moved-right-statistical
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-the-democrats-have-shifted-left-over-the-last-30-years/
https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/597987-new-polling-confirms-democrats-left-leaning-policies-are-out-of-touch/
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"Where was your frustration when he called Neo N** "very fine people" after one of them took a life with his car? "
I was disagreeing with him on this forum, everybody there on both "sides" were evil, and both sides came to fight. This is not about frustration, it is about criminality and oppression.
"Where was your anger when you see images of migrant children sleeping on bare floors with aluminum foil for blankets?"
Waiting for a chance to vote Obama out of office.
I was unable to find a quote where Trump called Obama a Muslim. How about a link?
"Before you lie, DJT said in a 30 second press conference Obama was indeed a US citizen. Which Trump was lying?"
I don't understand, it is possible to be both a US Citizen and a Muslim, or were you thinking about the birther thing and got confused?
"That was the most ultimate slander I have ever witnessed"
Were you born yesterday?
This slander and violence from the left started in the 60s and has continued apace. They called Reagan a fascist. They slandered George W and advocated assassinating him, and he was the most extreme about never lashing back, did that pacify them? They tore at him like jackals. A lot is made of the Democrat reaction to Trump, but really they have been so slanderous to every Republican president and candidate that there is nothing they are saying about Trump that they have not already said about other Republicans. What's new is the widespread, sustained, and organized violence. This MUST NOT get a change from us. If the oppressors are REWARDED for violence, they will double down on violence.
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@mrjoehimself ‘War Is Peace. Freedom Is Slavery. Ignorance Is Strength.’. TVs that watch you, no privacy, surveillance state, Newspeak, enforced collective hate sessions, "mutability of the past", "refs nonpersons", religion attacked, insertion of the state into family life, encouraging children to denounce their parents, state involvement in media, mobilization of law enforcement for enforcement of political compliance, crimethink, have you read the book? It was a warning and warnings depend on pattern recognition.
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+Matt Harding
Relativity has nothing to do with it. It is Newton, not Einstein, that they take issue with. Nor does religion, at least Christianity, have anything to do with it. If it did, the meme would have arisen in the second to twentieth centuries, when Christianity was more ubiquitous. What has changed is that the NEA has taken charge of American education, top to bottom, and replaced a lot of the curriculum with political indoctrination. Not only is science being taught more poorly, but it is taught along with a great deal of material that obviously is either opinion, or even blatantly false. Like the boy who cried "wolf", they find that when they lie so much, the students cease to believe them when they are telling the truth.
Also, it might be bankrolled by the Saudi interests which are funding Wahabist extremists in the US. "Aha", you say, "religion after all." No. Politics still. Wahabism is religion to the dupes, politics to the sheiks.
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Ignazio Silone relates this anecdote from the Cold War era. Silone was at the time of the incident a member of the Italian Communist delegation to the Communist International. During a meeting in Moscow, the English delegate was describing a problem that the British Communist Party was encountering with the British trade unions. His statement was interrupted by the Russian delegate, Piatnisky, who offered the obvious solution — that the British Communists should simply tell the trade unions one thing, but then do exactly the opposite. Silone continues:
The English Communist interrupted, "But that would be a lie." Loud laughter greeted this ingenuous objection, frank, cordial, interminable laughter, the like of which the gloomy offices of the Communist International had perhaps never heard before. The joke quickly spread all over Moscow, for the Englishman's entertaining and incredible reply was telephoned at once to Stalin and to the most important offices of State, provoking new waves of mirth everywhere. (In "The God That Failed," edited by Richard Crossman, Bantam, 1949, p. 92)
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@ConvictedFelonTrump8647 How to say you didn't listen to the arguments. This is Bulverism. It's what they teach in schools nowadays instead of critical thinking. You posit an irrational or ignoble CAUSE for your opponent's position, hoping to excuse yourself and your readers for dismissing his ARGUMENTS prior to consideration.
Quote from Bulverism by C. S. Lewis:
You must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong. The modern method is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became so silly.
In the course of the last fifteen years I have found this vice so common that I have had to invent a name for it. I call it "Bulverism". Some day I am going to write the biography of its imaginary inventor, Ezekiel Bulver, whose destiny was determined at the age of five when he heard his mother say to his father — who had been maintaining that two sides of a triangle were together greater than a third — "Oh you say that because you are a man." "At that moment", E. Bulver assures us, "there flashed across my opening mind the great truth that refutation is no necessary part of argument. Assume that your opponent is wrong, and explain his error, and the world will be at your feet. Attempt to prove that he is wrong or (worse still) try to find out whether he is wrong or right, and the natural dynamism of our age will thrust you to the wall." That is how Bulver became one of the makers of the Twentieth Century.
Suppose I think, after doing my accounts, that I have a large balance at the bank. And suppose you want to find out whether this belief of mine is "wishful thinking." You can never come to any conclusion by examining my psychological condition. Your only chance of finding out is to sit down and work through the sum yourself. When you have checked my figures, then, and then only, will you know whether I have that balance or not. If you find my arithmetic correct, then no amount of vapouring about my psychological condition can be anything but a waste of time. If you find my arithmetic wrong, then it may be relevant to explain psychologically how I came to be so bad at my arithmetic, and the doctrine of the concealed wish will become relevant — but only after you have yourself done the sum and discovered me to be wrong on purely arithmetical grounds. It is the same with all thinking and all systems of thought. If you try to find out which are tainted by speculating about the wishes of the thinkers, you are merely making a fool of yourself. You must first find out on purely logical grounds which of them do, in fact, break down as arguments. Afterwards, if you like, go on and discover the psychological causes of the error.
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@not_ever "has been supported and promulgated by Americans"
America is neither the source of this poison, nor the place where it has advanced the furthest. In America, a non-PC post can get you cancelled. In the UK, it can get you arrested. In Putin's Russia, political opposition can get you killed, regardless of the medium. The leftist "Long March through the Institutions" is not an American phenomenon, but throughout the West. The average person sees it from the US because the central media institutions (like Hollywood, social media, etc.) that they strove to infiltrate were American. If you want to compare apples to apples, compare the degree of radicalism of the most leftist European print publication to that of the most leftist American one and you will find that the American publication must be noticeably more moderate because of the social climate. Leftist progress is impeded by our Bill of Rights and our Constitution's separation of powers and checks and balances and by greater Protestant religious adherence.
Few Western democracies have a more robust opposition to woke dogma than the US: Argentina, certainly; maybe Poland or a few other Eastern European countries. If Elon Musk tried to do what he has done with X in the UK, they would arrest him as they frankly acknowledge. The same with most of Europe, most of Asia, and much of South America. Australia, Canada, and New Zealand are farther along in leftist authoritarianism than the US as well. Who are you comparing the US TO, that you would make such an absurd claim?
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@Octoberfurst "The Democratic party is not left!:"
The biggest thing, of course, is that a whole host of radical new issues have appeared out of the blue. Indoctrinating preadolescent children in dangerous sexual practices that will leave them more vulnerable to exploitation by sexual predators and a lucrative industry of quack elective drugs and procedures which will leave them impotent, frigid, and sterile; and dependent on continual, extra, and expensive medical care just to stay alive. Mainstreaming of censorship and political slander and violence. Mobilization of the "law enforcement" apparatus to suppress political dissent. Corporate and academic departments devoted to sequestration and punishment of political views. Mandatory Orwellian "struggle sessions" indoctrinating and enforcing the party line. Most of these things were not even being advocated quite recently, much less done. In the field of race relations, Democrats are utterly abandoning the ideal of the colorblind society in favor of "positive racism" and segregation:
https://www.newsweek.com/black-students-only-housing-washington-university-1633265
https://housing.wwu.edu/black-affinity-housing
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/american-colleges-segregated-housing-graduation-ceremonies/
But if you want to quantify the drastic leftward shift of the Democrat party, the easiest thing to graph and track is the shift in registered party members' views on issues that have actually existed long enough to be tracked over time. I can remember when free speech was not a partizan issue. Neither was support for Israel. Dems used to be, if anything, more hawkish about immigration control than Republicans. As recently as Obama's first presidential run, the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman (back when we could all agree on what those terms meant) was a plank in the DEMOCRAT party platform. Republicans haven't moved much since the 1980s when the Reagan revolution reversed the simultaneous double-digit inflation and unemployment and "national malaise" (Carter's phrase). The Democrats' leftward movement on a number of the same issues over time is a verifiable and quantifiable fact, as show in the charts and figures in these articles:
"Democrats and their water carriers in the press are like people on a boat that is drifting off to sea, but are convinced that it's the land that's moving, not them."
https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/pew-research-center-study-shows-that-democrats-have-shifted-to-the-extreme-left/
https://theweek.com/democrats/1002266/democrats-have-moved-further-left-than-republicans-have-moved-right-statistical
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-the-democrats-have-shifted-left-over-the-last-30-years/
https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/597987-new-polling-confirms-democrats-left-leaning-policies-are-out-of-touch/
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This is Bulverism. It's what they teach folks in school nowadays instead of critical thinking. Instead of engaging an argument you don't like you posit some ignoble or irrational motive for your opponent's position to give yourself and your readers an excuse to reject the argument without consideration.
Quote from Bulverism by C. S. Lewis:
You must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong. The modern method is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became so silly.
In the course of the last fifteen years I have found this vice so common that I have had to invent a name for it. I call it "Bulverism". Some day I am going to write the biography of its imaginary inventor, Ezekiel Bulver, whose destiny was determined at the age of five when he heard his mother say to his father — who had been maintaining that two sides of a triangle were together greater than a third — "Oh you say that because you are a man." "At that moment", E. Bulver assures us, "there flashed across my opening mind the great truth that refutation is no necessary part of argument. Assume that your opponent is wrong, and explain his error, and the world will be at your feet. Attempt to prove that he is wrong or (worse still) try to find out whether he is wrong or right, and the natural dynamism of our age will thrust you to the wall." That is how Bulver became one of the makers of the Twentieth Century.
Suppose I think, after doing my accounts, that I have a large balance at the bank. And suppose you want to find out whether this belief of mine is "wishful thinking." You can never come to any conclusion by examining my psychological condition. Your only chance of finding out is to sit down and work through the sum yourself. When you have checked my figures, then, and then only, will you know whether I have that balance or not. If you find my arithmetic correct, then no amount of vapouring about my psychological condition can be anything but a waste of time. If you find my arithmetic wrong, then it may be relevant to explain psychologically how I came to be so bad at my arithmetic, and the doctrine of the concealed wish will become relevant — but only after you have yourself done the sum and discovered me to be wrong on purely arithmetical grounds. It is the same with all thinking and all systems of thought. If you try to find out which are tainted by speculating about the wishes of the thinkers, you are merely making a fool of yourself. You must first find out on purely logical grounds which of them do, in fact, break down as arguments. Afterwards, if you like, go on and discover the psychological causes of the error.
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@Chipolinou "In 1947, Poland, together with Nazi Germany, seized territories from Czechoslovakia. After that, Churchill called Poland the "hyena of Europe." It turns out that Poland was an ally of Germany"
False. Germany surrendered to the allies in 1945. There was no Nazi Germany in 1947 and Poland was occupied by Soviet forces by then. From the joint Reich/Soviet invasion in 1939 till they regained their independence in 1981, Poland was occupied by foreign enemies. In fact, after the Soviet Union and Germany signed their Non-Aggression Pact and cooperated in crushing Poland the USSR gave political support and material aid to the Reich. This was the first intervention of the USSR in events leading up to the greater war, and it was helping the wrong side.
The Soviet Union was actually an ally of Nazi Germany and the USSR was supporting the Reich with its propaganda and vast amounts of material aid shipped across Poland by rail. While the US was already becoming the Arsenal of Democracy by sending material aid to the UK prior to the declaration of war, the USSR was simultaneously becoming the Arsenal of Despotism by sending material aid to Hitler up to the very day that Operation Barbarossa was launched. The actual crossing of the demarcation line by the Wehrmacht was timed so the first tank crossed the line eastward just as the last train of Soviet war material crossed the line westward. The courage of the Soviet peoples in the latter part of the war was commendable, but a complete analysis of the net Soviet contribution to the war must take into account that the problem the USSR helped solve was largely a problem they helped create. That Stalin's ally betrayed him in no way makes him the hero of the war. The Soviet Union didn't join the Allies until they had to do so to survive, and without the aid of the Atlantic Alliance (US/UK) they could not have survived.
"The USSR destroyed 80 percent of German soldiers. In the Second World War."
If those are the Soviet figures, they are no doubt inflated, that was standard procedure for Soviet history books and press releases. Any official that didn't inflate Soviet public figures would have been shot. At that, I doubt that they counted the German soldiers killed before the Soviet Union was attacked. As far as the USSR history books are concerned, that was the START of the "Great Patriotic War", and it ignores the German Axis ally Italy entirely (not to mention Japan).
The US declared war on December 11, 1941. The turning point of Germany's eastern front, prior to which Germany was totally on the offensive was the Battle of Stalingrad (23 August 1942 - 2 February 1943). By the time the Battle of Stalingrad had even begun, the US and UK were already shipping aid in bulk to the Soviet Union, mostly food a first, but constantly trucks and fuel, shipped in by Anglo-American convoys fighting through the German attempt at blockade. The defenders of Stalingrad almost starved as it was, and would certainly have starved without that aid.
By the time the USSR had turned to the offensive, The US had been supplying, and continued to supply, Sherman tanks in vast numbers to all the allies including the Soviet Union. The UK also supplied the USSR with some tanks. The US and the UK also supplied the Soviets with combat and logistics aircraft. 90% of the trucks supporting the Soviet offensive logistical effort were Studebaker trucks shipped in from US factories, and the bulk of the fuel was from the US as well. Without that aid the Soviet offensive would not have been possible logistically or materially.
Shortly after the US declaration of war, the US sent ground forces to aid the British effort to push the Axis powers out of Northern Africa. In November of 1942, the US opened an African front of its own in Operation Torch. The Anglo-American offensive pushed the Axis out of Africa, and deprived them of their main source of oil. This began well before the end of the Stalingrad battle and the start of the Soviet offensive, and paved the way for the subsequent Anglo-American invasions of Sicily and Italy, which took Italy out of the war. The US and UK also were heavily bombing Germany proper and military targets in Axis occupied Europe, reducing Germany's industrial capacity and inflicting casualties. All of this BEFORE the Normandy invasion.
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@z1DEv_ag " US, that still, and always did, recognise China as the official government of Taiwan?"
This is incorrect. Nixon agreed to withdraw recognition of Taiwanese independence as a diplomatic gesture to court China as a counterbalance to the Soviet Union. You seem ignorant of recent history, so let me remind you of who "Taiwan" is. Going back to the 20th century, the Kuomintang ( KMT ), [I] also referred to as the Guomindang ( GMD ), [17] the Nationalist Party of China was our WW2 ally against Imperial Japan. After the war we cut off arms supplies to the battle-weary Nationalists while Stalin was supplying full support to Mao's communists. The Nationalists lost the civil war and were exiled to the island of Formosa or Taiwan. (This was our first betrayal, without it there probably would not have been a Korean or a Vietnam War.)
When Soviet supported North Korea invaded South Korea, precipitating the Korean War, the Republic of China (Taiwan), despite our recent betrayal, sent troops to support us along with our other allies. When Soviet supported North Vietnam invaded South Vietnam and we tried to do the same thing we had done in Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Korea, and Taiwan sent troops to support us while virtually ALL our NATO "allies", including the UK and Canada, stabbed us in the back diplomatically, condemning our efforts. In the midst of Taiwan's support the Nixon administration, wanting to take advantage of the political friction between the Chicoms and the Soviets after the death of Stalin and play mainland China against the USSR, transferred US diplomatic recognition from our ally to our enemy. (Second betrayal)
In the aftermath of our refusal to supply South Vietnam with the arms promised in the peace treaty ending the Vietnam War (Yes, children, we won the war before we lost it, North Korea never signed a peace treaty, North Vietnam DID - third betrayal), the North Vietnamese Army invaded the South with more Soviet tanks and planes than the US deployed against the Normandy beachhead in WW2. Then the purges began. The situation in Vietnam was so bad that Vietnamese were trying to escape the country by trying to TRAVERSE THE PACIFIC in anything that could float, however marginally. (web search "vietnam boat people")
Democratic reforms were implemented in the 1980s in Taiwan, and now Taiwan is a prosperous and thriving democracy. Taiwan is the world's main supplier of computer chips, a CAPITAL GOOD that undergirds our modern economy. The voters have indicated their desire to remain free. With respect to the "one China/two Chinas" issue, if our criterion is the "consent of the governed" then there is one China, the Republic of China (Taiwan). The mainland, the People's Republic of China is a renegade province. If our criterion is NOT the "consent of the governed", we owe King George an apology.
Now others have gone on at length to explain the economic national interest we have in Taiwan. I'm not an economist. I am a moralist. Taiwan has been an active, loyal, and steadfast ally of the US for 80 years, for all her political history. They were our allies when we didn't have many. "But the Chicoms have nukes!". Yea, they'll have more the next time, and the next. We won the Cold War with containment and readiness, not appeasement. Appeasement is surrender on the installment plan.
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Of course not! Jews are not conspiring as a race to turn Europe into an Islamic bloc which will murder them and join in attacking Israel, and only an utter dolt would entertain the notion for a second. Many Jews have liked living in Europe and have built honest productive lives for generations, and now they are having to leave because of this crap. This is completely a leftist crime, and not all Jews are leftists. And not all leftists are Jews. You try to taint every legitimate issue with your pet peeve but you never defend the connection, you just assert it and call people names. The notion that an ethnicity is a conspiracy is absurd.
And you contradict yourselves. You say that it is the Jewish religion that prompts Jews to hostility and domination plots toward gentiles and Christians and that Zionism is part of the plot, then when you list subversive Jews in places of power you list atheist Jews whose family has never darkened the door of a synagogue, sometimes for generations, and who are more hostile to Israel than you are. You say the Jews are to be blamed because they killed Christ, then you say modern Jews are not descendants of the Old and New Testament Jews. You deny the historical Holocaust by way of trying to improve the image of Nazis, then call for a holocaust. If a holocaust is bad, why are you calling for one? If it is not bad, why do you spend so much energy trying to deny the 20th century European one? Not only are each of your claims unsupported and absurd in isolation, they don't even fit together into a consistent lie.
The only effective lie the socialists have nowadays is accusing US of being YOU. If you did not exist, they could not win anything. They would have to invent you in order to have anything to say after their policies and ideology have been so totally discredited historically.
In fact, every day in every way groypers support the same things the "cultural Marxists" support, from the centrality of "group identity" through the abolition of the civil rights enumerated in the Constitution (all of them, without exception) through segregation, to the opposition to the ideal/goal of limited government and freedom itself. This is how you know they are false flag leftists-BECAUSE ALL OF THE THINGS THEY ADVOCATE ARE LEFTIST THINGS.
Your man Spencer endorsed Biden/Harris in '20. Nick Fuentes tried to urge Georgia conservatives to stay home and not vote in the runoff elections that handed the Dems the effective majority in the Senate. You are pulling out all the stops to ensure that conservatives lose, you are doing this OPENLY, and you expect us NOT TO NOTICE? That is why you denigrate EVERY EFFECTIVE CONSERVATIVE VOICE, not just the Jewish ones. Fascist and Marxists (two flavors of socialism) have been playing this game since the 1920s: "If you're not one of us you're one of them". BS. Occasionally they fight each other but most of the time they cooperate against liberty.
We conservatives have some political power and a following. You racists have nothing. You will always have nothing. You will always accomplish nothing as you have accomplished nothing to this day. The only effective checks on the socialist agenda have been accomplished by us, with no help from you, because you are not on the side of freedom. "A difference that MAKES no difference IS no difference."
Both commies and Nazis will:
Divide the public and foster hate along class/religious/gender/class lines
Segregate
Central plan the economy
Nationalize the press
End freedom of speech
Confiscate weapons
Persecute all non state sponsored religions
End all civil rights, including the rights enumerated in the US Constitution (and the Magna Carta).
Evict innocent citizens from their homes
Mobilize the apparatus of law and tax enforcement against their political enemies
Slander, imprison, and murder their political enemies
Eliminate or absorb all public organizations
Replace commercial entertainment media with a boring stream of propaganda.
The minor, insignificant differences between communism and Nazism are only important to communists and Nazis, not to anybody who loves freedom. You won't distract us from our fight for freedom with your internal socialist squabble over who should be our master.
"He is in great fear, not knowing what mighty one may suddenly appear, wielding the Ring, and assailing him with war, seeking to cast him down and take his place. That we should wish to cast him down and have no one in his place is not a thought that occurs to his mind."-J.R.R. Tolkien, "Lord of the Rings"
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No, history didn't start with 15th century Europe. Nor did acquisition by invasion start with them, not even in the Americas. In the old days, the only way to get ahead was by taking stuff by force. The genius of the West is that we developed a less invasive and more efficient way to prosper. Protestantism created the modern libertarian west. We (Protestants) ended slavery; implemented religious freedom, political freedom, academic freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press FIRST, and thus caused the academic, scientific, technological, and material progress that followed; and most of the rest of the world hasn't caught up with it yet. John 8:32 "You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
Socialism is a reversion to the old way, take stuff by force.
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Yes, everything that happened, God allowed to happen. Some things he chose to happen. Do you object to believers having positions of power? This is not wise if you like freedom and human flourishing. Protestantism created the modern libertarian west. We (Protestants) ended slavery; implemented religious freedom, political freedom, academic freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press FIRST, and thus caused the academic, scientific, technological, and material progress that followed; and most of the rest of the world hasn't caught up with it yet. You like freedom? You like separation of church and state? You're welcome! John 8:32 "You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
And what do you propose as an alternative? Atheism? As an organizing principle of society, that has a singularly abysmal track record. From the Jacobin Reign of Terror in the French Revolution, through the Soviet Union, the Third Reich, Communist China, and the Pol Pot regime; the result of a society based on atheism has invariably been bloodbath after bloodbath. The USSR alone murdered more of its own civilians than have ever been killed in all the inquisitions, pogroms, and purely religious wars in recorded history, and they only lasted: what? 80 or so years?
Most militant secularists profess an ethic of pragmatism with a goal of human flourishing. As a Christian, I have reason to rationally expect that adherence to the truth will result in the universal good. As a skeptic, you have no corresponding reason to believe anything of the sort. Those two things would, according to your assumptions, only correlate by the wildest of coincidences. If you think you can improve the world, try improving some basket case of a nation to prove your approach is viable, don't demand control of a country that is doing relatively well. Good luck.
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"not idolize Trump"
I've been following Jesus since before you were born, son. I don't idolize Trump, nor does anybody on the Daily Wire. DW gets grief all the time for being frank about Trump's flaws. Taking action in the world when possible isn't spiritually inappropriate, it's what disciples of Jesus DO (by their fruits ye shall know them).
"or try to make him president"
I'm reminded of what Abraham Lincoln said when Stephen Douglas accused opponents of slavery as promoting marriage between blacks and whites. "just because I do not want a colored woman for a slave, I do not necessarily want her for a wife. I do not need to have her for either. I can just leave her alone."
In a similar manner, I find I can easily support Trump for president without idolizing him.
"If you actually put the kingdom of heaven first, you would be at peace in this chaotic period."
If you can allow the country to go to hell without doing what you can to stop it, you're not putting the kingdom of God first, you won't be at peace in your heart, or in your neighborhood. And you shouldn't.
"Even if Kamala Harris is elected, so what... What is the significance of her election?"
More abortions. More crime. More poverty. More misery. More poisoning and mutilation and moral and spiritual corruption of children. More censorship and persecution and less scope for charitable deeds, truth, and the gospel, less freedom. More of a bunch of bad things that no person of goodwill would welcome, and Jesus DOES call us to be persons of goodwill. There is no such thing as being too pious to do good in the world. "To do good is noble, but to teach others to do good is nobler, and it's far less trouble." - Mark Twain.
"the last days"
You mention the last days, but I wonder if they are real to you at all. Jesus will not only set the world right, he will separate the sheep from the goats. You won't be rewarded for sitting on your self-righteous thumbs. Repent! Matt 25:14 -
"¶For the kingdom of heaven is as a man travelling into a far country, who called his own servants, and delivered unto them his goods." "And unto one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one; to every man according to his several ability; and straightway took his journey." "Then he that had received the five talents went and traded with the same, and made them other five talents." "And likewise he that had received two, he also gained other two." "But he that had received one went and digged in the earth, and hid his lord’s money." "After a long time the lord of those servants cometh, and reckoneth with them." "And so he that had received five talents came and brought other five talents, saying, Lord, thou deliveredst unto me five talents: behold, I have gained beside them five talents more." "His lord said unto him, Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord." "He also that had received two talents came and said, Lord, thou deliveredst unto me two talents: behold, I have gained two other talents beside them." "His lord said unto him, Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord." "Then he which had received the one talent came and said, Lord, I knew thee that thou art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strawed:" "And I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth: lo, there thou hast that is thine." "His lord answered and said unto him, Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I have not strawed:" "Thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received mine own with usury." "Take therefore the talent from him, and give it unto him which hath ten talents." "For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath." "And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." "¶When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:" "And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:" "And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left." "Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:" "For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:" "Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me." "Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?" "When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?" "Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?" "And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." "Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:" "For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink:" "I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not." "Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?" "Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me." "And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal."
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DN "I don't idolize Trump, nor does anybody on the Daily Wire."
@Jack-Alexander_J "The DW idolizes politics above Christ" because the "
You changed your ground. You accused DW of idolizing TRUMP. When I deny this you call me a lair and assert something irrelevant to your charge of idolizing Trump.
"DW does not emphasize holiness, rather it focuses on CRITICAL COMMENTARY."
It is a political channel. That's not a crime. And it's pro-Christian, for that matter.
"Voting is giving your approval and validation"
It is not. It is a choice. Choose life.
"" If you can allow the country to go to hell without doing what you can to stop it, you're not putting the kingdom of God first, you won't be at peace in your heart, or in your neighborhood. And you shouldn't."
"You're wrong because the book of Revelations says that the last days, to the sinners, shall be days of sorrow and mourning."
How does that make me wrong? God prophesies that evil will come, that is not an excuse for not fighting evil. When He says "Occupy until I come" that does not mean occupy space.
"You need to evangelize (Matthew 24:14) and intercede for the lost.""Electing Trump as president will not take away the sins of those who sin."
I do those things. I also do good in the world. God doesn't call us to do evangelize and pray OR do good. He calls us to do all three. You spuriously condemn those who obey, while refusing to obey yourself.
"Electing Trump as president will not take away the sins of those who sin."
Neither will brushing my teeth. That is not a reason not to brush my teeth. Electing Trump will result in fewer abortions. You either care about that or you don't. Apathy is nothing to brag about.
" it's not possible to make this Earth perfectly just."
It is possible to improve the world around you, and it is always sin to make the perfect the enemy of the good.
"What matters is your relationship to Jesus Christ."
My relation to Jesus Christ is "servant". This means doing what He says to do.
"This is how Jesus thinks"
It's not your job to read Jesus' mind. It is our job to OBEY HIS COMMANDS. None of this is an argument against doing good in the world. And insofar as you are arguing against that, you're arguing against God.
"You're not the savior."
No, but I follow Him. You should try it.
"Why do you call me "self-righteous"? Am I self-righteous because I affirm God's standards of righteousness and it makes you uncomfortable?"
No, you are self-righteous because you set up your disobedience as superior to obedience. I contradict you because you're wrong. I convict you of sin in word and deed. James 4:15 - "Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin." My emotions aren't engaged. You needn't project your guilt on me. I have comprehensively proven your objections irrational and unbiblical. You insist on a false dichotomy between piety and good deeds whereas biblical piety includes good deeds.
James 2:17-26:
"Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works. Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble. But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead? Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar? Seest thou how faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect? And the scripture was fulfilled which saith, Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness: and he was called the Friend of God. Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only. Likewise also was not Rahab the harlot justified by works, when she had received the messengers, and had sent them out another way? For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also."
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@vintagesportscardfinds964 "the last time"
The Oklahoma City bombing had no connection with a popular movement. The largest groups of domestic terrorists (Antifa, BLM) operate with near legal impunity and political and media support as they assault conservative demonstrators, riot, vandalize, loot, and kill.
As for the war Hamas started in Isreal, Hamas has always had a policy of siting its installations in places like hospitals, schools, and the like and not permitting the civilians to leave. The "human shield" tactic has been a mainstay of the terrorist handbook for a long time. No major national or international defense war has been waged without civilian casualties, including WW2. Luckily, the grownups were in charge then or Hitler would have completed the Holocaust and the conquest of Europe. Israel is not bombing population centers because they're population centers as you imply, but because Hamas has personnel or equipment there. To want the human shield tactic to WORK is to share the genocidal goals of Hamas, because if they aren't forced to stop they will succeed.
It is true the Hamas justifies their atrocities in the name of God, but Israelis don't need a religious reason to defend their communities and their families. Israel is a fairly secular country, and with conscription the rank and file of the IDF reflect this. Many members of the IDF are atheists, Christians, or Muslims.
A note on your tendentious use of the term "fundamentalism". The word fundamentalist was coined by certain evangelical denominations and was later extended by polemicists to certain Islamic groups in a tendentious attempt to equate the dissimilar and discredit the former. As applied to Islam, it is not a term Islam uses itself, but a western notion applied to serve western political ends. There are no Islamic "fundamentalists" and there are no Judaic "fundamentalists". Conservative Christians seek to make those who agree or disagree good.
Your attempt to imply that violence is associated with "religion" is counterhistorical. When did MAN not have these issues? "Religin" is such a broad term that virtually no generalizations can be applied to the "whole". And what do you propose as an alternative? Atheism? An an antidote to ideological murder, that has a singularly abysmal track record. From the Jacobin Reign of Terror in the French Revolution, through the Soviet Union, the Third Reich, Communist China, and the Pol Pot regime; the result of a society based on atheism has invariably been bloodbath after bloodbath. The USSR alone murdered more of its own civilians than have ever been killed in all the inquisitions, pogroms, and purely religious wars in recorded history, and they only lasted: what? 80 or so years?
"both sides would rather see people of other religions dead than to coexist with them."
You're one third right. Hamas says as much, and there are many passages in the Koran and Hadith that support such an attitude. Israel does not want to exterminate the "Palestinians". They have obviously has the power to do exactly that for the last 60 years. If that was what they wanted, they would have done it by now. Muslim and Christian Isrealis have rights of Israeli citizens; rights which Arabs have nowhere else in the Middle East and in no Islamic state worldwide. Voting rights, freedom of religion, women can drive and don't have to wrap themselves in a parka in tropical heat or be accompanies by a male protector from her family, rights of sexual preference, etc., the whole shebang. The only major difference is that Arab Israelis are exempt from the compulsory military service, though they can volunteer, and many do. In the Gaza strip, ruled by Hamas, Arabs suffer the most oppressive government in the Middle East, with none of the above freedoms.
PERSONAL freedom is the only meaningful sort. "Group freedom" is invariably a smoke screen for tyranny. Taiwan votes to maintain its democracy, group freedom says mainland China owns them because they're Chinese. Northern Ireland votes to remain in the UK, group freedom says Ireland owns them because they're Irish. Many Blacks in the US vote Republican, Joe Biden and many other Democrats say the Democrat Party owns them because they're Black. (My! That sounds familiar!) Hitler says the destiny of Germany is important and Germans are being oppressed, he proceeds to steal other countries and murder racial minorities.
Legitimate political organizations group to protect personal freedom from threats. That is the lone and essential purpose of government: to FORCE people to mind their own business. Because left to themselves, THEY WILL NOT.
Protestantism created the modern libertarian west. We (Protestants) implemented religious freedom, political freedom, academic freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press FIRST, and thus caused the academic, scientific, technological, and material progress that followed; and most of the rest of the world hasn't caught up with it yet. John 8:32 "You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
You see the law enforcement apparatus mobilized against anybody remotely conservative, and you somehow claim to regard LAKE as autocratic? Whose rights was SHE violating? Who was SHE using the legal apparatus to punish for their political beliefs? WHAT PLANET ARE YOU FROM? Your party is increasingly authoritarian. It's all there, including your racial segregation, prejudice and racial and political slander and hate, using government power to suppress and terrorize political opposition, moving to restrict gun ownership and possession, locking down state control of businesses and the economy, media censorship, using schools as political indoctrination centers, mobilizing taxpayer money for the production of partizan propaganda, abortion and euthanasia; all straight out of the Nazi playbook, including your economic program. Your side is doing all these things, we are not and never were. For YOU to call US authoritarian is projection to a delusional degree.
Tax cuts are not authoritarian. Deregulation is not authoritarian. Free speech is not authoritarian. The right to keep and bear arms is not authoritarian. Freedom of religion is not authoritarian. Criticism of a government lapdog corporate media is not authoritarian. Speaking the truth to power in the face of persecution is not authoritarian. Opposition to the firing of employees, the cutoff of their access to funds or commerce, violence against their persons and property, and the restriction of their communication on the basis of their political beliefs is not authoritarian. All of these things are the diametric opposite of authoritarian. We're on the freedom side of every issue except hurting children, and you shouldn't be free to do that. Conservatism is anti-authoritarian fundamentally and point by point. Leftism is authoritarian fundamentally and point by point.
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All long term mass media, including the printing press, tend to slow the change of a language. Spoken language, and to a lesser extent, "hot" media which is consumed and discarded (weather reports, sports commentary) have an only temporary effect, except that "hot" media, unlike personal speech, tends to standardize over space. Long term media: books, movies, audio recordings, etc, of enduring interest tend to standardize the language over TIME.
I have heard the opinion that the King James Bible and the works of Shakespeare have had a slowing effect on the rate of change of English. Also, there is the factor mentioned that a large body of speakers tends to slow the rate of change of a language, and English has a lot of speakers, which also leads to more authors and a more robust literary tradition stabilizing the language over time.
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You say that science fiction ignores the possibility of different number systems, but you are only considering TV and movie SF. At least when I was growing up, written SF addressed this all the time. I think the difference is because cinematic SF does not expect as much intellectually of the viewer as written SF does of the reader. Some examples, off the top of my head:
The invaders in the brilliant Niven/Pournelle novel Footfall counted by octal (base 8).
The Cyclo (or Psychlo, whatever, I stopped reading them when I found out that Hubbard was a cult leader) aliens in the Battlefield Earth novels used base 11 arithmetic.
I heard somewhere that when the Arabs introduced the west to "Arabic numerals" (which they got from India), there was, in Europe, an immediate recognition that the place value system was superior, but some dispute about what the base should be for ours. Merchants favored a very composite base (like 12), and mathematicians favored a prime base (like 7, 11, or 13). Ten had certain advantages, the fact that it was a sort of compromise between these extremes, a certain affinity with the Roman system, whose symbols were products of 5s and 2s, a biological affinity (10 digits on hands) and compatibility with the established trade systems of the near and far east.
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@paulhagen1002 So, yes, you do.
The cannon was closed before the second century. As early as 120 AD, (Muratori) Christians started making lists of the books written by the apostles and prophets, lest people forget which books were prophetic and get them mixed up with apocryphal and pseudepigraphical books. Clement of Rome (c. A.D. 95) mentioned at least eight New Testament books in a letter; Ignatius of Antioch (c. A.D. 115) also acknowledged about seven books; Polycarp, a disciple of John, (c. A.D. 108), acknowledged fifteen letters. That is not to say these men did not recognize more letters as canonical, but these are ones they mentioned in their correspondence. Later Irenaeus wrote (c. A.D. 185), acknowledging twenty-one books. Hippolytus (A.D. 170-235) recognized twenty-two books.
For whatever set of reasons, there is a widespread belief out there (Internet, popular books) that the New Testament canon was decided at the Council of Nicea in 325 AD—under the conspiratorial influence of Constantine. The fact that this claim was made in Dan Brown’s best-seller The Da Vinci Code shows how widespread it really is. Brown did not make up this belief; he simply used it in his book. The problem with this belief, however, is that it is patently false. The Council of Nicea had nothing to do with the formation of the New Testament canon (nor did Constantine). Nicea was concerned with how Christians should articulate their beliefs about the divinity of Jesus. Thus it was the birthplace of the Nicean creed.
When people discover that Nicea did not decide the canon, the follow up question is usually, “Which council did decide the canon?” Surely we could not have a canon without some sort of authoritative, official act of the church by which it was decided. Surely we have a canon because some group of men somewhere voted on it. Right? This whole line of reasoning reveals a fundamental assumption about the New Testament canon that needs to be corrected, namely that it was (or had to be) decided by a church council. The fact of the matter is that when we look into early church history there is no such council.
Sure, there are regional church councils that made declarations about the canon (Laodicea, Hippo, Carthage). But these regional councils did not just “pick” books they happened to like, but affirmed the books they believed had functioned as foundational documents for the Christian faith. In other words, these councils were declaring the way things had been, not the way they wanted them to be. Thus, these councils did not create, authorize, or determine the canon. They simply were part of the process of recognizing a canon that was already there.
This raises an important fact about the New Testament canon that every Christian should know. The shape of our New Testament canon was not determined by a vote or by a council, but by a broad and ancient consensus. Here we can agree with Bart Ehrman, “The canon of the New Testament was ratified by widespread consensus rather than by official proclamation.” This historical reality is a good reminder that the canon is not just a man-made construct. It was not the result of a power play brokered by rich cultural elites in some smoke filled room. It was the result of many years of God’s people reading, using, and responding to these books.
If you were to attend these early councils and congratulate the ecclesiasts there for asserting "Church authority" over the prophetic canon, it is THEY who would rebuke you in no uncertain terms. "The Church" didn't make the Bible, the Bible made the Church. "The Church" does not have authority over the Scriptures. The Scriptures are the Church's rule of faith and practice. God by His Holy Spirit gave apostolic and prophetic authority to the apostles whom Jesus chose and those who received the prophetic gift from an apostle. These had no "successors". A body is "apostolic" in so far as they follow the apostles teaching as passed down to us in the Bible.
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Agree with most of this except "Robots don't pay taxes". That would be true if the world tax structure were a "head tax", and everybody payed the same regardless of income. In fact it is not population that is taxed but income=profit. If technology increases productivity, it will also increase tax revenue and, all other things being equal, the purchasing power of the revenue collected. The purchasing power of currency is proportional to the ratio of money supply to the supply of goods and services. We don't live on income tax return paper, we live on goods and services.
The question is "Are robots really going to be as good as they claim?" That is the question, and I'm afraid the answer is "No". They say that near human level AI is less than 5 years away. They said the same thing when I was 5. They have been periodically saying the same thing all my life. I am 63. Forgive me, but I find the "imminent inevitability" of this development less plausible with every passing year. According to Roger Penrose, what Goedel's Theorem really proves is that understanding is not algorithmic.
I am not against AI research, we keep getting useful and informative stuff from it. We also keep not getting human level intelligence. There is some hope that technology in some form, even partly electronics and information processing, will increase productivity enough to get us through, if we also renew our civilization. But we can't advance our productivity and choke off our industrial activity at the same time. All the reigning political obsessions are perverse. We are forming a bucket brigade carrying water FROM the burning building TO the sinking ship in the harbor.
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@Elliotbbi "Could someone please explain clearly what the meaning of "woke" is? I'm confused."
Certainly. "Woke" is the successor to "politically correct". "Politically correct" is a translation of a Russian phrase from the Soviet era. It was a recognition of Soviet enforcement of dogmatic "truth". When official non-acceptance of a fact is causing a problem, and your friend is contemplating saying the unsayable in public, you say, "You may be factually correct, but you are politically incorrect." This usage filtered its way into the Western left, and, as leftist authoritarian memes tend to do in a freer society, began to become so noxious that nobody would use it outside of dark sarcasm as a contemptuous term of ridicule. And we all would have lived happily ever after.
This tends to happen to leftist euphemisms once the sane folk figure out what the cryptic terminology means. Hence the restless reinvention of new leftist euphemisms. The waxing leftist power bloc, deprived of "politically correct" needed a new euphemism for their suppression of "wrongthink". Since they were more and more indoctrinating young folk in their causes du jour as a result of the "long march through the institutions" having locked down key institutions of higher learning and the teacher's unions for primary and secondary schools, it was convenient to couch the party line as an awakening to inspire and relate to their new charges/victims. They needed a shibboleth adjective to separate the sheep from the goats, and settled on the stylishly hip-hop sounding "woke".
It was a shortcut for the authoritarian notion that anyone who challenged the establishment position on various issues calculated to divide the society and empower the authorities, such as alphabet "community" dogma, discrimination on the basis of race or sex, certain "environmental" issues, should be slandered, marginalized, cancelled, fired, jailed, or killed. Residual love of freedom in the West resulted in this euphemism sharing the fate of former euphemisms, being used ironically or sarcastically by their intended victims, to the point that they could no longer use the term in public without risking being laughed out of the room.
Since the term is now used almost exclusively by freedom loving folk, some latecomers and youth quite innocently get the impression that the term was coined by conservatives as a derisive term for leftists. No, the leftists coined and defined the term and now that their intended victims are wise to it, will have to devise another (and so on, lather, rinse repeat). In the meantime they will have to make do with calling their victims names, suing them, censoring them, arresting them, and assaulting them.
I hope you found this lesson helpful, and if you have any further questions, don't hesitate to ask. It may take me a while to reply. The side which tries to settle a question of fact by the use of force is the obscurantist side, every time. That's how you know who the bad guys are.
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@samr.england613 "SpaceX and Starlink are two different companies."
Starlink started out as a division at SpaceX. Later Starlink was spun off as a corporation. At that point, Starlink was a wholly owned subsidiary of SpaceX. The relationship of SpaceX and Starlink is not, as you imply, analogous to that between SpaceX and Tesla, namely two independent corporations which just happened to have had at one time the same CEO. The technical term for the relationship of SpaceX to Starlink is "parent corporation".
"SpaceX Falcon rocket has not been launched 200 times, thus you are lying."
You didn't even bother to search it before popping the "L" word? This is the Internet, not a shouting match in a pub. You can't get away with that crap here.
(or maybe you can if the channel administrator has set the channel to autodelete posts with links)
Note: I had to delete my sources and references because apparently the channel administrator has set the channel to autodelete posts with links. Some lazy admins do this to curb linkbait spam. This really sucks because it looks like the post was posted, and it even shows like it did, but when I reload the page, my comment is gone. Because of crap like this, I have to check every time to see that my post took, then sometimes edit the links out of my post and repost. Surely having the posters able to cite and readers able to confirm my data is more important than eliminating some spam links that few people are going to click on anyway, at least if we're going to improve the "He said, she said" nature of Internet discourse.
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@bovineavenger734 Wow, you're taking a passage written about some unknown sinners in the first century and applying it to somebody in the 21st century you hate without cause. Is this supposed to be pertinent to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict? Because it sure isn't.
"I don't understand how anyone who has ever touched a Bible could support Israel,"
Is yours a Braille Bible? You are supposed to READ it. There is not a shred of Biblical support for your hatred of Jews. The Bible condemns such an attitude throughout:
Genesis 12:3
John 4:20-24
and the definitive treatise on the proper Christian attitude toward Jews: Romans 9-11.
Apart from Jesus, they are unsaved, but we are nowhere told to hate the unsaved, quite the reverse, much less single out one particular group of unsaved for special hatred, much less to lie about anyone at all. The Bible is chock full of promises for the future felicity of Israel which have not yet been fulfilled, and shall be without fail. "For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance." As for the regrafting of Israel back into the vine as prophesied in Romans 11; we see this being fulfilled today. There are as many Jewish converts since 2000 as there have been in two centuries prior. This is documented in the YouTube channels "Jews for Jesus" and "ONE FOR ISRAEL". God is on the move. Follow or get out of the way.
Not content to devoting yourself to the diametric opposition to the Word of God, you are determined to seal your damnation by blasphemously proclaiming your own envy, hatred, and slander in the Holy Name! You are far from Jesus Christ: REPENT!!
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"The gospels blame the Jews"
It's the gospels that record that the Romans executed Jesus. Christian theology says MAN'S SIN necessitated the crucifixion.
It is not in Israel's or Jews' interest to cultivate across-the-board enmity and suspicion of Christianity. I am, of course, aware of a long history of Christian (mostly Catholic) persecution of Jews. But today Protestant evangelicals are the only external bloc of friends Israel or Jews have, and to have Jews react to their friends as to enemies will only make things easier for their (largely OUR) real enemies. Not all Zionists were or are Jews, and Christian Zionists had a hand in the restoration of Israel. We are the main reason that antisemitism has less of a free hand in the US than elsewhere. Go to your local Holocaust museum and see who was hiding Jews from the SS in occupied Europe. (Most Protestants in those days were what would now be called evangelical.) Neither is it a coincidence that the US, with the highest proportion of evangelicals in the West, is the first nation that recognized Israel and is the UN member state that votes against all of those nastygram "resolutions" the riff-raff keep hurling at Israel, and supports Israel's defense with vouchers for the purchase of American weapons.
By dint of education, personal history, and personal interest I am quite knowledgeable about Christian theology and our Bible. There is no such teaching as you imagine and the New Testament is not hostile to Jews. It is regarded as heretical by Rabbinical Judaism, but that's another matter. The existence and flourishing of Israel is an agreeable development to Christian eschatology, for reasons which I suppose would not interest you. I have grown used to the fact that a major pastime of enthusiastic non-evangelical dilettantes is explaining my religion to me as to a child. One develops a thick skin. If our existence offends you, that is no reason to project a reciprocal sentiment onto us.
A major charity to which Christians contribute is The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews which, as one might suspect, is a Charity whereby Christians give humanitarian aid to Jews in situ wherever and help them migrate to Israel from places where they suffer hardship. Aside from US military aid, US Christians are materially and politically supporting Jews and Israel in many ways, and the only Jew that deigns to notice is Dennis Prager. I am not so knowledgeable about the demographic situation in Europe, etc., but in the US, support for Israel correlates strongly with conservative-evangelical-Republican, while hostility to Israel correlates with leftist-atheist-Democrat, even among ethnic Jews. Surely a supporter of Israel has noticed being embraced by Republican presidents and shunned by Democrat ones? Knowing who one's friends are is both a mental health and a survival skill. It is timely to cultivate this, because the mid-term forecast is for rough weather, for us as well as for Jews.
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@dergrenzganger2956 " I forgot how many women raped and murdered the American GI ! "
Apparently, you forgot a great deal. How the refugees fled the Soviet occupied parts of Germany to what was to become West Germany, because the Soviets were raping civilians and the US and British troops were treating them well. This is your gratitude for our holding the Soviets at bay for half a century? When we try to keep the enemy (YOUR ENEMY) from gaining a naval base in Southeast Asia and enslaving another indigenous people who did them no harm you count that as OUR imperialism! Then you ignore the "boat people" who were trying with suicidal determination to flee Vietnam because they don't fit your narrative and don't put your slander and duplicity in the best light. If we were the oppressor, the last place the Vietnamese would have wanted to go would be to the US. But millions would have given their right arm to get to the US, and many lost a great deal more trying. Obviously, they would rather live anywhere other than Vietnam after the Soviets conquered it and started their reign of terror. If we had succeeded, South Vietnam could today be as free and prosperous as South Korea. THAT was our goal, and it was an honorable one, worthy of support rather than your vile slander.
What do you hope to gain by provoking those who to this day are your main safeguard against plainly acquisitive Russia? We are not fond of war, but Germans are fortunate that we are good at it.
You characterize our wars as wars of imperialism, but the first rule of imperialism is to keep the land. How many of the countries you mention are US territory? A minority. And we won most of the wars. You also include land purchases as proof of our warmongering. I am not sure how that works.
"The US was never attacked once."
This thread is a comment on a war started by a Japanese attack on the US. Your notion that this was what somebody (you named no names) in the US wanted is a thoroughly discredited conspiracy theory to which no actual historian subscribes, but even it does not deny the fact of the attack. Then, as I point out elsewhere, Hitler declares war on the US. Barbary War- the Barbary states were conducting piracy and exacting protection money from other nations, that is an act of war. War of 1812, the British navy was kidnapping US citizens to serve aboard British naval vessels. In many of the remainder of the actual (as opposed to your CIA conspiracy theory conflicts) wars, a US ally or an innocent third party was attacked first.
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+DN
""They can get all the publicity they want sticking with establishment hosts whom they KNOW won't challenge them."
+Ve Ly
"I do not know that Rubin changed his values for money yet you do know this for certain, such hypocrisy."
The behavior of such hosts can be determined empirically, and the guests can use that as a selection criterion. This is not comparable to your speculation about motives: One is analysis of behavior, the other is speculation on motive. One is pattern recognition, the other is mind reading.
"what the left is, if you do not know that they are against the corrupt establishment."
Four commercial TV broadcast networks, every cable news channel except one, essentially all the rest of the cable channels, Hollywood, and the Silicon Valley powers that control and tweak search engines, deplatforming, and the like in a partisan mannerthat's an overview of some of the largest leftist institutions which DON'T usually leverage taxpayer money for leftist advocacy: Those that DO include public broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts, public sector labor unions, chiefly and most eggregiously the National Education Association, and the federal, state, and local education bureaucracies that it controls to indoctrinate students, lobby, etc., and a whole host of "non profit organizations" that receive taxpayer funds which they use to propagandize the public and lobby. Every aspect of the latter section is a fundamental conflict of interest, the very matrix of corruption, and it's not even secret, this is being done out in the open. This whole power bloc is the most monolithic and powerful establishment the world has ever known. If you don't know about this, you don't know the most fundamental fact of the American power structure.
Against this we have 1 cable news network, most of talk radio, some half deplatformed and downlisted websites, and a handful of policy advocacy groups funded mostly by small donors, a few by a minority of the billionaires. Note that most of the big donors donate to Democrat and leftist causes and groups. Big business LIKES big government. Vest all the power in one organization and own the organization works for them. The safe and self-serving thing for any business large enough for the establishment to notice to do is join the oppressors. They can influence the regulation to stifle their competitors. Medium and small business is Republican, because they can't get preferential treatment and they only benefit from general prosperity. In such a climate, opposing the establishment is unlikely in the extreme to be self serving or corrupt. There a whole field of Goliaths ravaging the land and when David Koch starts eying some smooth stones, you shout "Corrupt" "Unfair". Despite the power situation, there are, of course, a great number of gifted persons who oppose the establishment. If you were a Koch brother, would you support a genuine advocate of many of your ideas, or would you try to corrupt an advocate of the establishment, knowing that the establishment can outbid you six ways to Sunday, and that they will flip your traitor right back? It may flatter your prejudices to assume that anyone who opposes you must be corrupt, but that does not make it a valid assumption.
The institutions I mentioned may not seem leftist to you if they are no more leftist than you. This reminds me of a discussion I had in the 80s with a leftist fellow student who said that the 3 commercial networks were not leftist. I shared with him the results of the Lictor Rothman report which showed that 90% of the decision makers in the newsrooms (editors, writers, anchors, reporters) voted for Jimmy Carter in an election in which Ronald Reagan got 53% of the popular vote (and the independent Anderson got 4%). I concluded, "They may not be leftist compared to you, but compared to a more meaningful control group, like the US electorate, they are very leftist indeed."
I'll hear you about the Republican establishment dominance when the Republican party wins an election in the District of Columbia, where the bureaucrats, wonks, and lobbyists live.
" why wouldn't you criticize Rubin for complaining about "regressives" and doing identity politics,"
Because he supports his criticism with arguments and facts and not mindreading and prejudice.
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"I guess it is very easy to assume that everything you disagree with is left-wing"
I quantified my statement about network newsrooms with poll data and cited the source.
"Just recently a federal judge appointed by Bush"
Bush was not a conservative.
"Ocasio-Cortez won, and how much support did she get from CNN and other "liberal" media outlets? NONE."
Is that your minimum standard of liberal? She's a member of Democrat Socialists of America, is for the abolition of ICE, and claims ICE maintains secret torture centers along the border. CNN & company want to WIN back the Congress, so that they can impeach Trump. They know that they won't win nationally with candidates like her.
"And lastly I told you before, you lack integrity"
Yes you keep saying that and define lack of integrity as failing to assume that the Koch brothers supporting the opposition to the side the rest of the billionaires are supporting is corruption.
"I go by what he says and what he does."
Nothing that he says or does supports your accusation that he is corrupt.
"He's not backed up by facts"
Can you cite anything he said that is not demonstrable?
"If you want to talk about about monoliths let's talk about the money monolith, let's talk about the huge corporations"
I did, they support the Democrats, they're for open borders, and big government. They are part of the monolith I mentioned. If you support big government you are on their side.
You talk about the top 5%, and inherited wealth, as though the sons of the top 5% in one generation were the top 5% in the next generation, that is not so. According to Forbes, only 30% of billionaires inherited their wealth. And the largest corporations and the top 5% individual earners do not always coincide. The Forbes 400 changes membership each time. Trump, for instance, fell out of the last list before his election. That there will always be rich people and poor people does not mean that they will always continue to be the same people.
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+Ve Ly
"Yes you look at poll data instead of policies; proves my point."
I am citing data and making arguments, you are repeating disproven assertions.
-Digital Nomad
"They know that they won't win nationally with candidates like her."
+Ve Ly
"they did so well with establishment Democrats the last time,"
So they weren't extreme enough? I will post again here after the mid-terms and we'll see how well the Social Democrats do.
"They donate millions to conservative outlets and the Republican party"
And THAT DOES NOT MAKE THEM CORRUPT. OBVIOUSLY.
"the free market can provide health care (albeit an overpriced, under-covered, shitty one)"
The reason why the health care market became overpriced is because of the ubiquity of health insurance, so that the persons making health care decisions weren't the ones paying for it. Health care insurance became ubiquitous because in WW2, wages were controlled and taxed, but "benefits" were not. Employers competed for workers with benefits. In other words, the problem was not caused by free markets, but by government intervention.
"A big government would regulate the corporations and wouldn't allow the corporations to rule government by donating millions to the political parties in exchange for favors."
Why do you think that? Bigger government has ALWAYS led to more corruption. Our current government is way beyond its constitutional bounds and gets more corrupt as it gets bigger (like every government in the history of mankind). Einstein defined insanity as continuing to do the same thing and continuing to expect a different result. You have no logical basis for thinking that the same humans that you say can't be entrusted with a handful of billion dollars can somehow be entrusted with all the money, plus the power to censor you, regulate you, arrest you and kill you. That is not logically coherent. James Madison, federalist 51:
" It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions."
"glad you referred to an exceptionally shitty businessman, who despite his inherited wealth went bankrupt 6 times to show that downward mobility is possible"
You did not address my data from Forbes. In America, upward and downward mobility is common.
All you do is make assertions, you never cite data or make arguments. You're busted. Persistence is no substitute for an argument.
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+Ve Ly
"Written in the same text, unbelievable, no consistency, no honesty, no integrity."
What is this word salad supposed to mean? I note that you are repeating your slander of me, but you seem to think you have some evidence for it. You don't. You consistently state (and perhaps believe) that anyone who disagrees with you is dishonest and has bad motives. It does not follow that quoting somebody disagreeing with you is going to be recognized as proof that the person is dishonest and has bad motives.
+Digital Nomad
"Persistence is no substitute for an argument."
+Ve Ly
"Lol, yours or mine, why are you still here, mate?"
I persist in arguing, you persist in asserting. Persistence has its place, but a SUBSTITUTE for argument is not that place.
+Digital Nomad
"Democrats want open borders".
+Ve Ly
"What an intellectual, hilarious!"
You forgot to make an assertion. Are you asserting that Democrats, in particular the Social Democrat extremists you were praising in previous posts, don't want open borders?
"Darling, health is an essential part of life everyone NEEDS it, so naturally health care is omnipresent."
Health care is not synonymous with health insurance.
"EXCELLENT health care in their home countries in Europe which cost them very little because it was funded by taxes en regulated by the government."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNH7GTaUPQA
"So we should obviously turn to big corporations leading us, because that NEVER leads to corruption, OBVIOUSLY."
Big government compounds the power and influence of big business. Big business is using big government to stifle its competition, largely through the regulation you love. You still haven't answered my question. What makes you think the same humans that you say can't be entrusted with a handful of billion dollars can somehow be entrusted with all the money, plus the power to censor you, regulate you, arrest you and kill you? This is the fundamental problem with the notion that we need to give the government MORE control over our lives, when there has been too much since at least the late 30s overall. Not that every change has been for the worse, but US government is a bloated disaster. You want to cure our cold by giving us cancer. With the same medicine that gave us the cold in the first place.
"I will tell you a story:"
I will give you data:
http://college.usatoday.com/2015/01/02/for-the-first-time-public-colleges-get-more-money-from-students-than-states/
"The study, which was conducted by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, traced public college revenue between 2003 and 2012. In 2003, state funding accounted for 32% of public colleges’ revenue — more than any other source — while tuition made up 17%.
"But almost every year since then, money from students (and their parents and grandparents) went up, while state funding dropped. By 2012, tuition made up 25% of revenue, while money from state governments made up 23%."
Note that they are not counting in the "government funding" the fact that 80% of the tuition cash is from government loans and scholarship, with strings attached, of course. Of the non-government, non-tuition funding for colleges, some of it comes from alumni associations and other non-profits, some of which comes from your "big money". But "big money" is leftist, statist establishment money. The establishment holds the whip hand, otherwise all those leftist, Marxist, post-modernist professors would never have obtained tenure in the first place, much less have virtually shut out the idealogical opposition. It is universally recognized (no pun intended) that higher education is utterly and oppressively dominated by the left. Everybody knows this. You know this.
"From the early days of the select few having all of the power"
Those are they days that YOU want to bring back. Don't you realize the inevitable consequences of concentrating all the power in ONE institution? If increasing freedom, and spreading out the power, upholding enumerated rights, and material progress for the greatest number are the measure of human progress (as they are indeed), then leftism and socialism are the most regressive movements history has known.
"self praising diaries"
Where in my posts do I so much as mention, much less praise, myself?
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"without arguments."
Pointing out a non-sequitur is a necessary part of argument, when dealing with someone who repeats a non-sequitur.
"Oh dear, are you making assertions now?"
No, I'm asking questions.
"But it is intellectually dishonest and lazy to make it seem like the fringes of a movement are representative of the entire movement, don't you think?"
The Social Democrat you cited as the savior of the Democrat party from the old establishment Democrats is for the abolishment of ICE. No immigration enforcement is a synonym for open borders.
+DN "What makes you think the same humans that you say can't be entrusted with a handful of billion dollars can somehow be entrusted with all the money, plus the power to censor you, regulate you, arrest you and kill you?"
+VL
"Well these are not the same people for starters."
Precisely. Did you read the federalist quote above? The anarchist fallacy is to assume that men are angels. The leftist fallacy is to assume that men are governed by angels. No unction of sainthood or state of grace is afforded a public figure, like all men he experiences temptations proportional to the scope of his power, "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely"
+VL
"If we get money out of politics."
Yes that is the rub, the greatest single perversion of the system is the many ways in which TAXPAYER money is funneled into partisan influence of the elections and issue advocacy. This is the most important and fundamental conflict of interest in our current system. Public sector unions "negotiate" contracts with the government at every level, then contribute to the campaigns of the candidates they negotiated with. These unions also encourage and subsidize the "correct" political activities on the rank and file, and punish the "incorrect" ones. In the case of teacher's unions, they also indoctrinate students directly. More on education below. The Ad Council and "public service announcements", and other government publications advocate policies to the voter. The government subsidizes non-profits that contribute to candidate's campaigns. The government subsidizes politically charged "art" through such agencies as the National Endowment for the Arts. The government operates a state funded and controlled media outlets in the form of the Public Broadcasting Network, and state and local subsidized media. The government encourages dependency on their handouts which influences the electorate. All of these conflicts of interests militate the same way. The common interest of this entire corrupt network is an increase in the scope of government power and spending. The government has no business using taxpayer money to influence elections.
"..the people in power will have reached that status by people voting them in - just as easily as they can be voted out - not by bribes."
But you don't want to get rid of the bribes, you want to get rid of the part of campaign contributions that helps both sides, leaving the electoral advocacy exclusively in the hands of the corrupt establishment, the mainstream media, and Hollywood.
"And they don't stay in power indefinitely, even the highest administration can only last 8 years,"
You cite the ONLY office of the federal government that has term limits, the presidency. Did you vote Republican when Newt Gingrich's "Contract With America" put term limits in the platform?
"It is universally recognized that education broadens the mind"
That is certainly the ideal, but when the institution stifles access and expression of opposing viewpoints, as the current education establishment does, that is not the result.
"But the problem lies not with the educators or students, but with the administration and the accessibility of education."
While many professors are pulling down six figure salaries, the problem of increasing education cost is primarily a result of vastly bloated administration staff, partly an overhead of regulation compliance, but mostly a result of staffing new administrators whose job is to enforce political correctness on campus and in the curriculum.
"the spectrum has moved so far to the right that the people who pursue an education are in debt for life."
The increase in cost is a result of the overhead of stricter political enforcement of unanimity. How does a movement to the right increase student debt?
+VL "poverty, famine, child labor, exploitation and no hope for the future."
+DN"Those are they days that YOU want to bring back."
+VL
"those are the days you don't want to leave."
Are you trying to maintain that:
1. "poverty, famine, child labor, exploitation and no hope for the future." are characteristic of US society.
2. that these are characteristic of free rather than socialist societies?
This is not what history shows us. This is not what current affairs show us. Prosperity is characteristic of economic freedom. Exploitation is characteristic of centralized government power. Hope is characteristic of equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome. If freedom fostered poverty, the US would be among the poorest countries in the world and our poor would be poorer than the poor in other nations as a whole, but this is not the case. If socialism enriched a society, Americans would be clambering to get to Mexico to get jobs (and they would be turned away, because Mexico enforces their immigration laws). Venezuela was once one of the most prosperous nations in South America, but has been reduced to an economic shambles with plenty of "poverty, famine, and hopelessness". The newly nationalized oil company can't even run the oil fields at a profit.
"Tell me how much freedom is there in poverty, in famine in a lack of education and health care?"
Freedom creates prosperity and prosperity pays for education and health care. All the material advances since the dark days of centralized government power in the hands of aristocrats have resulted from freedom. Freedom is the mainspring of human progress. That is why America, starting from scratch, surpassed the giants of the Old World in a century and a half.
"Progressives want to provide you with all the necessities you need to survive"
So they keep saying, and they keep achieving the opposite. (cue the Einstein quote)
"so you can be truly free."
"Providing for" individuals disincentivizes productivity, and enslaves them to their "benefactors". There was a class of people who had their needs provided for, they were called "slaves". "Freedom to", freedom to act freely is freedom. "Freedom from" is slavery"
"That is the real issue. That is the issue that will continue in this country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself shall be silent. It is the eternal struggle between these two principles — right and wrong — throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time, and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity and the other the divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says, ‘You work and toil and earn bread, and I’ll eat it.’ " - Abraham Lincoln
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A major untapped ISRU concept is building an orbital infrastructure largely out of decommissioned orbiting hardware: orbital salvage, if you will. It would require some industrial infrastructure to be launched, but there is a LOT of junk flying around out there (from defunct satellites and spent boosters to dropped wrenches), and it is not mingled oxide dust like regolith, but instead refined metals, plastics, glass, and silicon; usable electronic and structural components. Despite these materials being in widely divergent orbits, concentrating them should still be much cheaper than lifting new mass from the Earth since they can be moved by high specific impulse ion thrusters. This would also mitigate the proliferation problem by making fewer and larger structures with a lower ratio of cross section to mass, making the "Kessler Syndrome" prospect less likely and severe. For this reason, it always saddens me a little when space hardware gets deorbited. (with the possible exception of LEO hardware in high traffic areas where they will fall shortly anyway. A mature salvage infrastructure could eventually recycle even these, but we need to survive to get there.)
CONSIDERED IN ISOLATION, "reorbiting" rather than deorbiting the ISS may well be cheaper, but the infrastructure to do so (the ion tug), might well prove quite useful and efficient in the long run.
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For heaven's sake, not the "conservative shills" crap again. If you think that conservative content is the path to easy money, you haven't the merest clue about the media landscape. Every conservative spokesman goes into the field knowing he could make many times more hawking the other side. The side underwritten by oodles of well connected billionaire donors. The side that never has to worry about demonitization, cancellation, censorship or subsidized industrial strength slander, harassing litigation, organized subsidized pre-pardoned harassment and outright naked violence, and political prosecution from a lockstep monolithic power bloc of the bureaucratic state, legacy and state sponsored media, the electronic gatekeepers, their shady cynical oligarchs, and their many dupes and henchmen.
It just irks the hell out of you that we work-stained Bob Cratchits in our deplorable masses can glean a ha'pence here, a tu'pence there and have the unmitigated gall to pool our penury and prayers; our blood, sweat, tears, and toil; our individually feeble voices and indomitable goodwill to collectively support a few brave and talented men and women to publish some genteel and diffident criticism against the most powerful corrupt political machine the world has known. "It's not FAIR", sobs the crybully in agony as he lays on the whip. "There oughta be a LAW!!" It never occurred to anyone in the history of mankind to speak the truth to power FOR MONEY, for good and sufficient reason. It's bad for business.
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@test_subject_7127 "the good values should be inherent in every human"
From what first principles do you reach such a conclusion? Yes, it's moral for people to be moral, that's a tautology, but it does not follow that it's AUTOMATIC or NATURAL for people to be moral. It's equivocation to confuse the moral sense of "should" with the causative sense. The "should" of "You should do better" doesn't equate with the should of "That should do it" when you change a flat tire.
Protestantism created the modern libertarian west. We (Protestants) ended slavery; implemented religious freedom, political freedom, academic freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press FIRST, and thus caused the academic, scientific, technological, and material progress that followed; and most of the rest of the world hasn't caught up with it yet. John 8:32 "You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
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@ollocollo "non believers, don't believe"
That's a play on words that in this context amounts to equivocation over the meaning of the word "believe". In a Christian context "believer" is often shorthand for "believer in Christ". Making an assumption whose content can be referred to as "nothing" is not the same as making no assumption. A polemic trick atheists have been playing recently is blurring the important distinction between atheists and agnostics. Arguably, agnostics make no assumptions, atheists definitely do.
"nothing in the world that proves"
If you are unfamiliar with the evidence for God and Christianity, it's because you haven't looked. You claim that there is no evidence for God, and that those who believe in these ideas do so irrationally. That was never a rational claim, and certainly is not so today. In the past hundred years, science has not been kind to the notions of atheism and philosophical materialism, rather science has consistently and systematically undercut those claims. Whenever an aspect of science or archaeology can be brought to bear on the questions of origins, it has favored the creationist position.
Atheism became a moderately popular alternate view of origins in the Victorian Era. Science was just getting started, and since one of the aspects which science addressed was how things worked, a hope began to be fostered among those hostile to faith that explanations of science might serve to displace the revealed truth of the Bible.
It is common sense that anything that began must have been begun by something else. Jews and Christians had long taught that physics/space/time/matter (from now on we will just call it matter) was a created thing, created by God. God's origins did not have to be explained because he did not begin. He was either eternally pre-existant, or outside time altogether. In either case he was GROUND OF BEING, the prime mover or central fact of which all other facts were derivative.
No explanation can be offered for why something exists rather than nothing. Yet, this should not give us pause because SOMETHING DOES EXIST. If in the link of causality there was ever a node where NOTHING EXISTED, then of course, nothing would exist forever thereafter. Anything which begins to exist must be caused by something else. It follows that any account of origin must either have an infinite regression, or a closed loop, or a ground of being.
Christians claimed that God was outside of time, and ground of being. The Atheists of the Victorian era countered Matter was eternally pre-existant, thus did not begin, thus required no agent of origin. They claimed Matter was Ground of Being. In the area of the origin of species they resorted to the notion of evolution, as lame as "it just happened" might seem to first order as an explanation. At first, this was not presented as a theory of the origin of life itself, because it was not yet known that life was not eternally pre-existant. This body of belief will be referred to as "materialism" in the remainder of this treatise (not to be confused with a preoccupation with the trappings of wealth, which is "materialism" in a completely unrelated sense). Though atheism and materialism almost always go together, the terms have different definitions. Atheism is the belief that no God exists. Materialism is the belief that matter is ground of being; that everything that exists is physics/space/time/matter simply, or a derivative epiphenomenon of it. It is generally recognized that atheism, in the strictest sense, stands or falls on the strength of materialism. Evolution is generally understood to be necessary for atheism/materialism, but not the reverse.
But starting in 1924, Edwin Hubble painstakingly developed a series of distance indicators to galaxies. This allowed him to estimate distances to galaxies whose red shifts had already been measured, mostly by Slipher. In 1929 Hubble discovered a correlation between distance and recession velocity—now known as Hubble's law. Lemaître had already shown that this was expected, given the cosmological principle. In the 1920s and 1930s almost every major cosmologist preferred an eternal steady state universe, and several complained that the beginning of time implied by the Big Bang imported religious concepts into physics; this objection was later repeated by supporters of the competing steady state theory. The rub is that Big Bang means that matter had a beginning, and thus cannot be ground of being. This undercuts the logical underpinnings of atheism/materialism
<This exposition will continue in my next post, to see the rest of my posts you must change the "sort by" order just under the video window to "newest first">
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<continued from previous post>
Also, from:
< Note: I had to delete my sources and references because apparently the channel administrator has set the channel to autodelete posts with links. Some lazy admins do this to curb linkbait spam. This really sucks because it looks like the post was posted, and it even shows like it did, but when I reload the page, my comment is gone. Because of crap like this, I have to check every time to see that my post took, then sometimes edit the links out of my post and repost. Surely having the posters able to cite and readers able to confirm my data is more important than eliminating some spam links that few people are going to click on anyway, at least if we're going to improve the "He said, she said" nature of Internet discourse.>
Almost everything about the basic structure of the universe--for example, the fundamental laws and parameters of physics and the initial distribution of matter and energy--is balanced on a razor's edge for life to occur. As the eminent Princeton physicist Freeman Dyson notes, "There are many . . . lucky accidents in physics. Without such accidents, water could not exist as liquid, chains of carbon atoms could not form complex organic molecules, and hydrogen atoms could not form breakable bridges between molecules" (p. 251)--in short, life as we know it would be impossible.
Scientists call this extraordinary balancing of the parameters of physics and the initial conditions of the universe the "fine-tuning of the cosmos." It has been extensively discussed by philosophers, theologians, and scientists, especially since the early 1970s, with hundreds of articles and dozens of books written on the topic. Today, it is widely regarded as offering by far the most persuasive current argument for the existence of God. For example, theoretical physicist and popular science writer Paul Davies--whose early writings were not particularly sympathetic to theism--claims that with regard to basic structure of the universe, "the impression of design is overwhelming" (Davies, 1988, p. 203). Similarly, in response to the life-permitting fine-tuning of the nuclear resonances responsible for the oxygen and carbon synthesis in stars, the famous astrophysicist Sir Fred Hoyle declares that
I do not believe that any scientists who examined the evidence would fail to draw the inference that the laws of nuclear physics have been deliberately designed with regard to the consequences they produce inside stars. If this is so, then my apparently random quirks have become part of a deep-laid scheme. If not then we are back again at a monstrous sequence of accidents. [Fred Hoyle, in Religion and the Scientists, 1959; quoted in Barrow and Tipler, p. 22]
A few examples of this fine-tuning are listed below:
1. If the initial explosion of the big bang had differed in strength by as little as 1 part in 1060, the universe would have either quickly collapsed back on itself, or expanded too rapidly for stars to form. In either case, life would be impossible. [See Davies, 1982, pp. 90-91. (As John Jefferson Davis points out (p. 140), an accuracy of one part in 10^60 can be compared to firing a bullet at a one-inch target on the other side of the observable universe, twenty billion light years away, and hitting the target.)
2. Calculations indicate that if the strong nuclear force, the force that binds protons and neutrons together in an atom, had been stronger or weaker by as little as 5%, life would be impossible. (Leslie, 1989, pp. 4, 35; Barrow and Tipler, p. 322.)
3. Calculations by Brandon Carter show that if gravity had been stronger or weaker by 1 part in 10 to the 40th power, then life-sustaining stars like the sun could not exist. This would most likely make life impossible. (Davies, 1984, p. 242.)
4. If the neutron were not about 1.001 times the mass of the proton, all protons would have decayed into neutrons or all neutrons would have decayed into protons, and thus life would not be possible. (Leslie, 1989, pp. 39-40 )
5. If the electromagnetic force were slightly stronger or weaker, life would be impossible, for a variety of different reasons. (Leslie, 1988, p. 299.)
Imaginatively, one could think of each instance of fine-tuning as a radio dial: unless all the dials are set exactly right, life would be impossible. Or, one could think of the initial conditions of the universe and the fundamental parameters of physics as a dart board that fills the whole galaxy, and the conditions necessary for life to exist as a small one-foot wide target: unless the dart hits the target, life would be impossible. The fact that the dials are perfectly set, or the dart has hit the target, strongly suggests that someone set the dials or aimed the dart, for it seems enormously improbable that such a coincidence could have happened by chance.
References
Barrow, John and Tipler, Frank. The Anthropic Cosmological Principle. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.
Davies, Paul. The Accidental Universe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.
____________. Superforce: The Search for a Grand Unified Theory of Nature. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984.
____________. The Cosmic Blueprint: New Discoveries in Nature's Creative Ability to Order the Universe. New York, Simon and Schuster, 1988.
Davis, John Jefferson. "The Design Argument, Cosmic "Fine-tuning," and the Anthropic Principle." The International Journal of Philosophy of Religion.
Dirac, P. A. M. "The evolution of the physicist's picture of nature." Scientific American, May 1963.
Hacking, Ian. The Emergence of Probability: A Philosophical Study of Early Ideas About Probability, Induction and Statistical Inference. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975.
Leslie, John. "How to Draw Conclusions From a Fine-Tuned Cosmos." In Robert Russell, et. al., eds., Physics, Philosophy and Theology: A Common Quest for Understanding. Vatican City State: Vatican Observatory Press, pp. 297-312, 1988.
____________. Universes. New York: Routledge, 1989.
Plantinga, Alvin. Warrant and Proper Function. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Sklar, Lawrence. Physics and Chance: Philosophical Issues in the Foundation of Statistical Mechanics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Smart, J. J. C. "Laws of Nature and Cosmic Coincidence", The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 35, No. 140.
Smith, George. "Atheism: The Case Against God." Reprinted in An Anthology of Atheism and Rationalism, edited by Gordon Stein, Prometheus Press, 1980.
Smith, Quentin. "World Ensemble Explanations." Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 67, 1986.
Swinburne, Richard. An Introduction to Confirmation Theory. London: Methuen and Co. Ltd, 1973.
Van Fraassen, Bas. Laws and Symmetry. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.
Weatherford, Roy. Foundations of Probability Theory. Boston, MA: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982.
/end citation
<more about fine tuning in next post>
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<cont'd>
Another list of cosmic fine tuning dials from:
<link deleted, see previous note>
N, the ratio of the strength of electromagnetism to the strength of gravity for a pair of protons, is approximately 1036. According to Rees, if it were significantly smaller, only a small and short-lived universe could exist.[12]
Epsilon (ε), a measure of the nuclear efficiency of fusion from hydrogen to helium, is 0.007: when four nucleons fuse into helium, 0.007 (0.7%) of their mass is converted to energy. The value of ε is in part determined by the strength of the strong nuclear force.[13] If ε were 0.006, only hydrogen could exist, and complex chemistry would be impossible. According to Rees, if it were above 0.008, no hydrogen would exist, as all the hydrogen would have been fused shortly after the big bang. Other physicists disagree, calculating that substantial hydrogen remains as long as the strong force coupling constant increases by less than about 50%.[10][12]
Omega (Ω), commonly known as the density parameter, is the relative importance of gravity and expansion energy in the Universe. It is the ratio of the mass density of the Universe to the "critical density" and is approximately 1. If gravity were too strong compared with dark energy and the initial metric expansion, the universe would have collapsed before life could have evolved. On the other side, if gravity were too weak, no stars would have formed.[12][14]
Lambda (λ), commonly known as the cosmological constant, describes the ratio of the density of dark energy to the critical energy density of the universe, given certain reasonable assumptions such as positing that dark energy density is a constant. In terms of Planck units, and as a natural dimensionless value, the cosmological constant, λ, is on the order of 10−122.[15] This is so small that it has no significant effect on cosmic structures that are smaller than a billion light-years across. If the cosmological constant were not extremely small, stars and other astronomical structures would not be able to form.[12]
Q, the ratio of the gravitational energy required to pull a large galaxy apart to the energy equivalent of its mass, is around 10−5. If it is too small, no stars can form. If it is too large, no stars can survive because the universe is too violent, according to Rees.[12]
D, the number of spatial dimensions in spacetime, is 3. Rees claims that life could not exist if there were 2 or 4 dimensions of spacetime nor if any other than 1 time dimension existed in spacetime.[12]
An older example is the Hoyle state, the third-lowest energy state of the carbon-12 nucleus, with an energy of 7.656 MeV above the ground level. According to one calculation, if the state's energy were lower than 7.3 or greater than 7.9 MeV, insufficient carbon would exist to support life; furthermore, to explain the universe's abundance of carbon, the Hoyle state must be further tuned to a value between 7.596 and 7.716 MeV. A similar calculation, focusing on the underlying fundamental constants that give rise to various energy levels, concludes that the strong force must be tuned to a precision of at least 0.5%, and the electromagnetic force to a precision of at least 4%, to prevent either carbon production or oxygen production from dropping significantly.[16]
REFERENCES:
1. Rees, Martin (May 3, 2001). Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces That Shape The Universe. New York, NY: Basic Books; First American edition. p. 4.
2. Gribbin. J and Rees. M, Cosmic Coincidences: Dark Matter, Mankind, and Anthropic Cosmology p. 7, 269, 1989, ISBN 0-553-34740-3
3. Davis, Paul (2007). Cosmic Jackpot: Why Our Universe Is Just Right for Life. New York, NY: Orion Publications. p. 2. ISBN 0618592261.
4. Stephen Hawking, 1988. A Brief History of Time, Bantam Books, ISBN 0-553-05340-X, p. 7, 125.
5. Lawrence Joseph Henderson, The fitness of the environment: an inquiry into the biological significance of the properties of matter The Macmillan Company, 1913
6. R. H. Dicke (1961). "Dirac's Cosmology and Mach's Principle". Nature. 192 (4801): 440–441. Bibcode:1961Natur.192..440D. doi:10.1038/192440a0.
7. Heilbron, J. L. The Oxford guide to the history of physics and astronomy, Volume 10 2005, p. 8
8. Profile of Fred Hoyle at OPT. Optcorp.com. Retrieved on 2013-03-11.
9. Paul Davies, 1993. The Accidental Universe, Cambridge University Press, p70-71
10. MacDonald, J., and D. J. Mullan. "Big bang nucleosynthesis: The strong nuclear force meets the weak anthropic principle." Physical Review D 80.4 (2009): 043507. "Contrary to a common argument that a small increase in the strength of the strong force would lead to destruction of all hydrogen in the big bang due to binding of the diproton and the dineutron with a catastrophic impact on life as we know it, we show that provided the increase in strong force coupling constant is less than about 50% substantial amounts of hydrogen remain."
11. Abbott, Larry (1991). "The Mystery of the Cosmological Constant". Scientific American. 3 (1): 78.
12. Lemley, Brad. "Why is There Life?". Discover magazine. Retrieved 23 August 2014.
13. Morison, Ian (2013). "9.14: A universe fit for intelligent life". Introduction to astronomy and cosmology. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley. ISBN 9781118681527.
14. Sean Carroll and Michio Kaku (2014). How the Universe Works 3. End of the Universe. Discovery Channel.
15. John D. Barrow The Value of the Cosmological Constant
16. Livio, M.; Hollowell, D.; Weiss, A.; Truran, J. W. (27 July 1989). "The anthropic significance of the existence of an excited state of 12C". Nature. 340 (6231): 281–284. Bibcode:1989Natur.340..281L. doi:10.1038/340281a0.
Creationists argue that the tuning of all these "dials" in favor of life implies a tuner that favors life. This position is called the "strong anthropic principle". Critics of the strong anthropic principle propose the "weak anthropic principle". They posit that many universes exist, enough that one just happens to exist with the dials set right by chance, and therefore this is the universe in which the discussion is taking place. The problem is that those alternate universes cannot in principle be observed from this one (thus they are not empirical, but a fudge invented without evidence to avoid a conclusion the fudger doesn't like), and it is trimmed by Occam's razor, the principle of favoring the simpler answer.
The tendentiousness of the opposition to this idea is illustrated by the title and first paragraph of this article in Evolution News & Science Today :
"TO AVOID THE IMPLICATIONS OF COSMIC FINE-TUNING, A CONTINUING QUEST" "Remember, the multiverse is the currently favored prophylactic against the theistic implications of cosmic fine-tuning. So if the following sounds a bit abstruse, remember what’s at stake."
<problems with evolution follow in next post>
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<cont'd>
In 1859, Charles Darwin published "The Origin of the Species" propounding a theory that complex organisms arose gradually over eaons from simpler forms of life by the operation of natural selection on small random mutations. This was not a theory of the origin of life itself, but a theory of the generation of the vast variety of species observed today given life's original existence. He studied fossils and noted that forms existed in the past which were different from forms present. There were problems with the theory from the start. First, it is implausible on the face of it. "It just happened" is not the sort of thing one usually would classify as a "scientific explanation". The second law of thermodynamics was still new, and its implications not well understood, but complex systems creating, or greatly improving themselves was well outside the range of empirical observation, then as now. While seeming improbable, the improbability was difficult to quantify because the workings of life were an almost complete mystery; a huge "black box" into which the problems of the theory could be swept. This is an "evolution of the gaps", the confidence that future discoveries would explain the problems away.
One problem recognized from the start even by Darwin himself is the discontinuous nature of the fossil record. While gradual transitions could be documented from about the "family" level downward, above that level the types seemed to all appear suddenly, without transitional forms from previous families. One would expect a continuous line of each species back to the earliest macroscopic antecedents, if the theory were true. Darwin notes the problem in his book:
"Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory. The explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record." Charles Darwin (1859), The Origin of Species, p. 280.
"Evolution of the gaps", pesky evidence! But he was confident that the gaps would be filled by more transitional forms as the fossil record became more complete. (Update 2024-It hasn't)
Another aspect of the fossil record which was found rather early and does not fit well with Darwin's theory is the Cambrian Explosion.
<link deleted>
The Cambrian explosion or Cambrian radiation was the relatively short span event, occurring approximately 541 million years ago in the Cambrian period, during which most major animal phyla appeared, as indicated by the fossil record. Lasting for about the next 20–25 million years, it resulted in the divergence of most modern metazoan phyla. Additionally, the event was accompanied by major diversification of other organisms. Prior to the Cambrian explosion, most organisms were simple, composed of individual cells occasionally organized into colonies. Over the following 70 to 80 million years, the rate of diversification accelerated by an order of magnitude and the diversity of life began to resemble that of today. Almost all present animal phyla appeared during this period.
It is difficult to see, with a supposed random distribution of mutations, why such a great variety of phyla would appear in such a short period, in sharp contrast to previous and subsequent periods. This has still not been adequately explained.
More and more thru the decades has been discovered about the workings of life, and at each turn the many problems in detail were swept into the black box of the yet unknown. But at long last we are opening the last box, molecular biology, and instead of explanations for old problems we are discovering new and apparently intractable problems with the problem theory. We find not just staggering absolute complexity, but indeed many examples of "irreducible complexity": complex systems with many interrelated components which are not amenable to explanation by gradual change plus natural selection, because the system needs ALL the components to convey any benefit at all, and thus be selected for. In order to provide any survival benefit, the whole system must appear in one swell foop AT THE SAME TIME and integrated. The improbability of this is far worse than the mere product of the improbabilities of the component subsystems.
<link deleted>
For other biochemical problems with the evolutionary view of the origins of life, see:
Stephen Mayer - Signature in the Cell
<continued>
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This by no means exhausts the evidence for Theism and Christianity. I haven't completed writing up a summary of such evidence. I have taken a chronological approach to writing it up, starting with cosmology and biology (I am not done with biology), and I plan to continue through archeology, history, and sociology, ethics, etc. This is what I've written up so far. In the meanwhile, if you are interested in pursuing the evidence further, I can suggest a few resources:
C S Lewis - Mere Christianity - An introduction to the actual claims of Christianity (most non-Christians today have a distorted view)
Criticism of Scientism by Agnostics:
David Berlinski - The Deniable Darwin and Other Essays
- The Devil's Delusion - From the cover blurb:
Has anyone provided a proof of God’s inexistence? Not even close.
Has quantum cosmology explained the emergence of the universe or why it is here? Not even close.
Have the sciences explained why our universe seems to be fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life? Not even close.
Are physicists and biologists willing to believe in anything so long as it is not religious thought? Close enough.
Has rationalism in moral thought provided us with an understanding of what is good, what is right, and what is moral? Not close enough.
Has secularism in the terrible twentieth century been a force for good? Not even close to being close.
Is there a narrow and oppressive orthodoxy of thought and opinion within the sciences? Close enough.
Does anything in the sciences or in their philosophy justify the claim that religious belief is irrational? Not even ballpark.
Is scientific atheism a frivolous exercise in intellectual contempt? Dead on.
Atheists or agnostics who have converted to theism and/or Christianity by examining the evidence:
Lee Strobel - The Case for Christ
C. S. Lewis - Surprised by Joy
Hugh Ross - (many titles)
Anthony Flew - There is a God
Dr. Ed Feser - The Road from Atheism
Justin Brooke
David Wood - (seen on Bit Chute formerly YT Acts 17 Apologetics)
Dr. Michael Guillen
Dr. Michael Egnor
Jordan Monge
Peter Byrom
Abraham Lincoln – - "Abraham Lincoln’s Journey From Atheism To Christianity"
Bill Hayden – Australia’s second longest-serving Governor-General and was a renowned atheist for all of his life. Bill Received Jesus At 85
Rosaria Champagne Butterfield: Former Lesbian, Feminist, Atheist Professor. In what she describes as a train wreck, Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, a former tenured professor of English and women’s studies at Syracuse University, shares the incredible story of her journey to Christ, laying aside lesbianism, feminism and Atheism.
Michael McIntyre – Multi-Millionaire Atheist Who Hated God But Now, He Radically Accepts Jesus
Jennifer Fulwiler, Leah Libresco and Holly Ordway – Three Powerful women whose intellectual journey led to their conversion from atheism to Christianity.
Dr. Wayne Rossiter – Former atheist biologist who once described himself as a “staunch and cantankerous atheist” who sought every opportunity to destroy Christianity where it stood.
Jim Warner Wallace – Was a Smart Cold-Case homicide atheist detective who worked for the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD).
Dr. Greg Lehman – One day, he finished a medical consultation with his usual “Do you have any questions?” The walk-in patient stared at him and asked: “Have you accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as you personal Savior?”
Philosopher Edward Feser: The Associate Professor of Philosophy at Pasadena City College, previously a Visiting Assistant Professor at Loyola Marymount University, and a Visiting Scholar at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center. Feser speaks on how Studying Philosophy Led him To God.
Prof. Sarah Irving-Stonebraker – Professor Sarah Irving-Stonebraker is a Senior Lecturer in Modern European History at Western Sydney University in Australia.
In her article,“How Oxford and Peter Singer drove me from atheism to Jesus,” Sarah shares the incredible story that led her to Jesus Christ. Dr. Peter Singer is a fervent atheist and a champion of the idea that some human lives have little or no value. I am sure that if he learned he helped “drive” a fellow atheist to Jesus, he would be more than a little annoyed.
See Also: Christianity Is Spreading In My Country: Iran’s Intelligence Minister Laments
Howard Storm – Atheist Professor whose Near-death Experience drew him to Jesus Christ.
Ronald Dabdoub – As an atheist, Ronald wanted to know the truth about God. For 30 days he asked God to prove his existence with more than words. Days later, he had a vision of Jesus Christ, and that was the start of a new life for him.
Barak Lurie – Former Jewish atheist and profitable real estate/ business lawyer who found Jesus as he searched for truth. Author of Atheism Kills.
Caleb Kaltenbach: Former Atheist Raised By Gay Parents, but he embraced Jesus and today he’s a preacher of Jesus Christ.
Paul Ernest – Former Atheist Scholar, Paul Ernest has always been a deep thinker. Whether it was science or philosophy, he was the one constantly asking “Why” and “How?”.
Alexis Mason – A former Militant Atheist
Steve Tillman – Former atheist leader who did everything to suppress the idea of God.
Dezmond Boudreaux – “The whole time I was searching for peace and truth, but could never find it.” “When I found Christ, that’s when I truly found what I was looking for.” – Dezmond.
Guillaume Bignon – A Staunch Atheist Who Hated God, Visited Church “As One Visits A Zoo To See Exotic Animals” But Then God Caught Him.
Jessica Jenkins – Was a devout atheist who believed in science and the theory of evolution.
Miracles:
C. S Lewis - Miracles
Craig Keenor - Miracles
Eric Metaxas - Miracles
David Brooks - Neural Buddhist
Apologists:
C. S. Lewis
John Lennox
Josh McDowell
Hugh Ross
YouTube
Red Pen Logic
Inspiring Philosophy
I would stay away from Ken Hamm of Answers From Genesis, and Dr. Duane Gish and the Institute for Creation research. They seem to me to be supporting good conclusions by bad arguments. Sort of the way you atheists must think of Richard Carrier. Whether you choose to examine the evidence or not, the notion that Theists have no evidence and aren't interested in evidence had better be dropped.
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@rockysandman5489 "What is the evidence?"
In the past hundred years, science has not been kind to the notions of atheism and philosophical materialism, rather science has consistently and systematically undercut those claims. Whenever an aspect of science or archaeology can be brought to bear on the questions of origins, it has favored the creationist position.
Atheism became a moderately popular alternate view of origins in the Victorian Era. Science was just getting started, and since one of the aspects which science addressed was how things worked, a hope began to be fostered among those hostile to faith that explanations of science might serve to displace the revealed truth of the Bible.
It is common sense that anything that began must have been begun by something else. Jews and Christians had long taught that physics/space/time/matter (from now on we will just call it matter) was a created thing, created by God. God's origins did not have to be explained because he did not begin. He was either eternally pre-existent, or outside time altogether. In either case he was GROUND OF BEING, the prime mover or central fact of which all other facts were derivative.
No explanation can be offered for why something exists rather than nothing. Yet, this should not give us pause because SOMETHING DOES EXIST. If in the link of causality there was ever a node where NOTHING EXISTED, then of course, nothing would exist forever thereafter. Anything which begins to exist must be caused by something else. It follows that any account of origin must either have an infinite regression, or a closed loop, or a ground of being.
Christians claimed that God was outside of time, and ground of being. The Atheists of the Victorian era countered Matter was eternally pre-existent, thus did not begin, thus required no agent of origin. They claimed Matter was Ground of Being. In the area of the origin of species they resorted to the notion of evolution, as lame as "it just happened" might seem to first order as an explanation. At first, this was not presented as a theory of the origin of life itself, because it was not yet known that life was not eternally pre-existent. This body of belief will be referred to as "materialism" in the remainder of this treatise (not to be confused with a preoccupation with the trappings of wealth, which is "materialism" in a completely unrelated sense). Though atheism and materialism almost always go together, the terms have different definitions. Atheism is the belief that no God exists. Materialism is the belief that matter is ground of being; that everything that exists is physics/space/time/matter simply, or a derivative epiphenomenon of it. It is generally recognized that atheism, in the strictest sense, stands or falls on the strength of materialism. Evolution is generally understood to be necessary for atheism/materialism, but not the reverse.
But starting in 1924, Edwin Hubble painstakingly developed a series of distance indicators to galaxies. This allowed him to estimate distances to galaxies whose red shifts had already been measured, mostly by Slipher. In 1929 Hubble discovered a correlation between distance and recession velocity—now known as Hubble's law. Lemaître had already shown that this was expected, given the cosmological principle. In the 1920s and 1930s almost every major cosmologist preferred an eternal steady state universe, and several complained that the beginning of time implied by the Big Bang imported religious concepts into physics; this objection was later repeated by supporters of the competing steady state theory. The rub is that Big Bang means that matter had a beginning, and thus cannot be ground of being. This undercuts the logical underpinnings of atheism/materialism
<This exposition will continue in page 2>
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@rockysandman5489
Some posters have implied that there is no evidence for creationism, or for God, and that those who believe in these ideas do so irrationally. That was never a rational claim, and certainly is not so today. In the past hundred years, science has not been kind to the notions of atheism and philosophical materialism, rather science has consistently and systematically undercut those claims. Whenever an aspect of science or archaeology can be brought to bear on the questions of origins, it has favored the creationist position.
Atheism became a moderately popular alternate view of origins in the Victorian Era. Science was just getting started, and since one of the aspects which science addressed was how things worked, a hope began to be fostered among those hostile to faith that explanations of science might serve to displace the revealed truth of the Bible.
It is common sense that anything that began must have been begun by something else. Jews and Christians had long taught that physics/space/time/matter (from now on we will just call it matter) was a created thing, created by God. God's origins did not have to be explained because he did not begin. He was either eternally pre-existent, or outside time altogether. In either case he was GROUND OF BEING, the prime mover or central fact of which all other facts were derivative.
No explanation can be offered for why something exists rather than nothing. Yet, this should not give us pause because SOMETHING DOES EXIST. If in the link of causality there was ever a node where NOTHING EXISTED, then of course, nothing would exist forever thereafter. Anything which begins to exist must be caused by something else. It follows that any account of origin must either have an infinite regression, or a closed loop, or a ground of being.
Christians claimed that God was outside of time, and ground of being. The Atheists of the Victorian era countered Matter was eternally pre-existent, thus did not begin, thus required no agent of origin. They claimed Matter was Ground of Being. In the area of the origin of species they resorted to the notion of evolution, as lame as "it just happened" might seem to first order as an explanation. At first, this was not presented as a theory of the origin of life itself, because it was not yet known that life was not eternally pre-existent. This body of belief will be referred to as "materialism" in the remainder of this treatise (not to be confused with a preoccupation with the trappings of wealth, which is "materialism" in a completely unrelated sense). Though atheism and materialism almost always go together, the terms have different definitions. Atheism is the belief that no God exists. Materialism is the belief that matter is ground of being; that everything that exists is physics/space/time/matter simply, or a derivative epiphenomenon of it. It is generally recognized that atheism, in the strictest sense, stands or falls on the strength of materialism. Evolution is generally understood to be necessary for atheism/materialism, but not the reverse.
But starting in 1924, Edwin Hubble painstakingly developed a series of distance indicators to galaxies. This allowed him to estimate distances to galaxies whose red shifts had already been measured, mostly by Slipher. In 1929 Hubble discovered a correlation between distance and recession velocity—now known as Hubble's law. Lemaître had already shown that this was expected, given the cosmological principle. In the 1920s and 1930s almost every major cosmologist preferred an eternal steady state universe, and several complained that the beginning of time implied by the Big Bang imported religious concepts into physics; this objection was later repeated by supporters of the competing steady state theory. The rub is that Big Bang means that matter had a beginning, and thus cannot be ground of being. This undercuts the logical underpinnings of atheism/materialism
<This exposition will continue in my next post>
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@rockysandman5489 <pg 2 continued from previous post>
Also, from:
< Note: I had to delete my links because apparently the channel administrator has set the channel to autodelete posts with links. Some lazy admins do this to curb linkbait spam. This is truly unfortunate because it looks like the post was posted, and it even shows like it did, but when I reload the page, my comment is gone. Because of rubbish like this, I have to check every time to see that my post took, then sometimes edit the links out of my post and repost. Surely having the posters able to cite and readers able to confirm my data is more important than eliminating some spam links that few people are going to click on anyway, at least if we're going to improve the "He said, she said" nature of Internet discourse.>
Almost everything about the basic structure of the universe--for example, the fundamental laws and parameters of physics and the initial distribution of matter and energy--is balanced on a razor's edge for life to occur. As the eminent Princeton physicist Freeman Dyson notes, "There are many . . . lucky accidents in physics. Without such accidents, water could not exist as liquid, chains of carbon atoms could not form complex organic molecules, and hydrogen atoms could not form breakable bridges between molecules" (p. 251)--in short, life as we know it would be impossible.
Scientists call this extraordinary balancing of the parameters of physics and the initial conditions of the universe the "fine-tuning of the cosmos." It has been extensively discussed by philosophers, theologians, and scientists, especially since the early 1970s, with hundreds of articles and dozens of books written on the topic. Today, it is widely regarded as offering by far the most persuasive current argument for the existence of God. For example, theoretical physicist and popular science writer Paul Davies--whose early writings were not particularly sympathetic to theism--claims that with regard to basic structure of the universe, "the impression of design is overwhelming" (Davies, 1988, p. 203). Similarly, in response to the life-permitting fine-tuning of the nuclear resonances responsible for the oxygen and carbon synthesis in stars, the famous astrophysicist Sir Fred Hoyle declares that
I do not believe that any scientists who examined the evidence would fail to draw the inference that the laws of nuclear physics have been deliberately designed with regard to the consequences they produce inside stars. If this is so, then my apparently random quirks have become part of a deep-laid scheme. If not then we are back again at a monstrous sequence of accidents. [Fred Hoyle, in Religion and the Scientists, 1959; quoted in Barrow and Tipler, p. 22]
A few examples of this fine-tuning are listed below:
1. If the initial explosion of the big bang had differed in strength by as little as 1 part in 1060, the universe would have either quickly collapsed back on itself, or expanded too rapidly for stars to form. In either case, life would be impossible. [See Davies, 1982, pp. 90-91. (As John Jefferson Davis points out (p. 140), an accuracy of one part in 10^60 can be compared to firing a bullet at a one-inch target on the other side of the observable universe, twenty billion light years away, and hitting the target.)
2. Calculations indicate that if the strong nuclear force, the force that binds protons and neutrons together in an atom, had been stronger or weaker by as little as 5%, life would be impossible. (Leslie, 1989, pp. 4, 35; Barrow and Tipler, p. 322.)
3. Calculations by Brandon Carter show that if gravity had been stronger or weaker by 1 part in 10 to the 40th power, then life-sustaining stars like the sun could not exist. This would most likely make life impossible. (Davies, 1984, p. 242.)
4. If the neutron were not about 1.001 times the mass of the proton, all protons would have decayed into neutrons or all neutrons would have decayed into protons, and thus life would not be possible. (Leslie, 1989, pp. 39-40 )
5. If the electromagnetic force were slightly stronger or weaker, life would be impossible, for a variety of different reasons. (Leslie, 1988, p. 299.)
Imaginatively, one could think of each instance of fine-tuning as a radio dial: unless all the dials are set exactly right, life would be impossible. Or, one could think of the initial conditions of the universe and the fundamental parameters of physics as a dart board that fills the whole galaxy, and the conditions necessary for life to exist as a small one-foot wide target: unless the dart hits the target, life would be impossible. The fact that the dials are perfectly set, or the dart has hit the target, strongly suggests that someone set the dials or aimed the dart, for it seems enormously improbable that such a coincidence could have happened by chance.
References
Barrow, John and Tipler, Frank. The Anthropic Cosmological Principle. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.
Davies, Paul. The Accidental Universe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.
____________. Superforce: The Search for a Grand Unified Theory of Nature. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984.
____________. The Cosmic Blueprint: New Discoveries in Nature's Creative Ability to Order the Universe. New York, Simon and Schuster, 1988.
Davis, John Jefferson. "The Design Argument, Cosmic "Fine-tuning," and the Anthropic Principle." The International Journal of Philosophy of Religion.
Dirac, P. A. M. "The evolution of the physicist's picture of nature." Scientific American, May 1963.
Hacking, Ian. The Emergence of Probability: A Philosophical Study of Early Ideas About Probability, Induction and Statistical Inference. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975.
Leslie, John. "How to Draw Conclusions From a Fine-Tuned Cosmos." In Robert Russell, et. al., eds., Physics, Philosophy and Theology: A Common Quest for Understanding. Vatican City State: Vatican Observatory Press, pp. 297-312, 1988.
____________. Universes. New York: Routledge, 1989.
Plantinga, Alvin. Warrant and Proper Function. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Sklar, Lawrence. Physics and Chance: Philosophical Issues in the Foundation of Statistical Mechanics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Smart, J. J. C. "Laws of Nature and Cosmic Coincidence", The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 35, No. 140.
Smith, George. "Atheism: The Case Against God." Reprinted in An Anthology of Atheism and Rationalism, edited by Gordon Stein, Prometheus Press, 1980.
Smith, Quentin. "World Ensemble Explanations." Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 67, 1986.
Swinburne, Richard. An Introduction to Confirmation Theory. London: Methuen and Co. Ltd, 1973.
Van Fraassen, Bas. Laws and Symmetry. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.
Weatherford, Roy. Foundations of Probability Theory. Boston, MA: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982.
/end citation
<more about fine tuning in next post>
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@rockysandman5489 <pg 3 cont'd>
Another list of cosmic fine tuning dials from:
<link deleted>
N, the ratio of the strength of electromagnetism to the strength of gravity for a pair of protons, is approximately 1036. According to Rees, if it were significantly smaller, only a small and short-lived universe could exist.[12]
Epsilon (ε), a measure of the nuclear efficiency of fusion from hydrogen to helium, is 0.007: when four nucleons fuse into helium, 0.007 (0.7%) of their mass is converted to energy. The value of ε is in part determined by the strength of the strong nuclear force.[13] If ε were 0.006, only hydrogen could exist, and complex chemistry would be impossible. According to Rees, if it were above 0.008, no hydrogen would exist, as all the hydrogen would have been fused shortly after the big bang. Other physicists disagree, calculating that substantial hydrogen remains as long as the strong force coupling constant increases by less than about 50%.[10][12]
Omega (Ω), commonly known as the density parameter, is the relative importance of gravity and expansion energy in the Universe. It is the ratio of the mass density of the Universe to the "critical density" and is approximately 1. If gravity were too strong compared with dark energy and the initial metric expansion, the universe would have collapsed before life could have evolved. On the other side, if gravity were too weak, no stars would have formed.[12][14]
Lambda (λ), commonly known as the cosmological constant, describes the ratio of the density of dark energy to the critical energy density of the universe, given certain reasonable assumptions such as positing that dark energy density is a constant. In terms of Planck units, and as a natural dimensionless value, the cosmological constant, λ, is on the order of 10−122.[15] This is so small that it has no significant effect on cosmic structures that are smaller than a billion light-years across. If the cosmological constant were not extremely small, stars and other astronomical structures would not be able to form.[12]
Q, the ratio of the gravitational energy required to pull a large galaxy apart to the energy equivalent of its mass, is around 10−5. If it is too small, no stars can form. If it is too large, no stars can survive because the universe is too violent, according to Rees.[12]
D, the number of spatial dimensions in spacetime, is 3. Rees claims that life could not exist if there were 2 or 4 dimensions of spacetime nor if any other than 1 time dimension existed in spacetime.[12]
An older example is the Hoyle state, the third-lowest energy state of the carbon-12 nucleus, with an energy of 7.656 MeV above the ground level. According to one calculation, if the state's energy were lower than 7.3 or greater than 7.9 MeV, insufficient carbon would exist to support life; furthermore, to explain the universe's abundance of carbon, the Hoyle state must be further tuned to a value between 7.596 and 7.716 MeV. A similar calculation, focusing on the underlying fundamental constants that give rise to various energy levels, concludes that the strong force must be tuned to a precision of at least 0.5%, and the electromagnetic force to a precision of at least 4%, to prevent either carbon production or oxygen production from dropping significantly.[16]
REFERENCES:
1. Rees, Martin (May 3, 2001). Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces That Shape The Universe. New York, NY: Basic Books; First American edition. p. 4.
2. Gribbin. J and Rees. M, Cosmic Coincidences: Dark Matter, Mankind, and Anthropic Cosmology p. 7, 269, 1989, ISBN 0-553-34740-3
3. Davis, Paul (2007). Cosmic Jackpot: Why Our Universe Is Just Right for Life. New York, NY: Orion Publications. p. 2. ISBN 0618592261.
4. Stephen Hawking, 1988. A Brief History of Time, Bantam Books, ISBN 0-553-05340-X, p. 7, 125.
5. Lawrence Joseph Henderson, The fitness of the environment: an inquiry into the biological significance of the properties of matter The Macmillan Company, 1913
6. R. H. Dicke (1961). "Dirac's Cosmology and Mach's Principle". Nature. 192 (4801): 440–441. Bibcode:1961Natur.192..440D. doi:10.1038/192440a0.
7. Heilbron, J. L. The Oxford guide to the history of physics and astronomy, Volume 10 2005, p. 8
8. Profile of Fred Hoyle at OPT. Optcorp.com. Retrieved on 2013-03-11.
9. Paul Davies, 1993. The Accidental Universe, Cambridge University Press, p70-71
10. MacDonald, J., and D. J. Mullan. "Big bang nucleosynthesis: The strong nuclear force meets the weak anthropic principle." Physical Review D 80.4 (2009): 043507. "Contrary to a common argument that a small increase in the strength of the strong force would lead to destruction of all hydrogen in the big bang due to binding of the diproton and the dineutron with a catastrophic impact on life as we know it, we show that provided the increase in strong force coupling constant is less than about 50% substantial amounts of hydrogen remain."
11. Abbott, Larry (1991). "The Mystery of the Cosmological Constant". Scientific American. 3 (1): 78.
12. Lemley, Brad. "Why is There Life?". Discover magazine. Retrieved 23 August 2014.
13. Morison, Ian (2013). "9.14: A universe fit for intelligent life". Introduction to astronomy and cosmology. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley. ISBN 9781118681527.
14. Sean Carroll and Michio Kaku (2014). How the Universe Works 3. End of the Universe. Discovery Channel.
15. John D. Barrow The Value of the Cosmological Constant
16. Livio, M.; Hollowell, D.; Weiss, A.; Truran, J. W. (27 July 1989). "The anthropic significance of the existence of an excited state of 12C". Nature. 340 (6231): 281–284. Bibcode:1989Natur.340..281L. doi:10.1038/340281a0.
Creationists argue that the tuning of all these "dials" in favor of life implies a tuner that favors life. This position is called the "strong anthropic principle". Critics of the strong anthropic principle propose the "weak anthropic principle". They posit that many universes exist, enough that one just happens to exist with the dials set right by chance, and therefore this is the universe in which the discussion is taking place. The problem is that those alternate universes cannot in principle be observed from this one (thus they are not empirical, but a fudge invented without evidence to avoid a conclusion the fudger doesn't like), and it is trimmed by Occam's razor, the principle of favoring the simpler answer.
The tendentiousness of the opposition to this idea is illustrated by the title and first paragraph of this article in Evolution News & Science Today :
"TO AVOID THE IMPLICATIONS OF COSMIC FINE-TUNING, A CONTINUING QUEST" "Remember, the multiverse is the currently favored prophylactic against the theistic implications of cosmic fine-tuning. So if the following sounds a bit abstruse, remember what’s at stake."
<problems with evolution follow in next post>
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@rockysandman5489 <pg 4 cont'd>
In 1859, Charles Darwin published "The Origin of the Species" propounding a theory that complex organisms arose gradually over eaons from simpler forms of life by the operation of natural selection on small random mutations. This was not a theory of the origin of life itself, but a theory of the generation of the vast variety of species observed today given life's original existence. He studied fossils and noted that forms existed in the past which were different from forms present. There were problems with the theory from the start. First, it is implausible on the face of it. "It just happened" is not the sort of thing one usually would classify as a "scientific explanation". The second law of thermodynamics was still new, and its implications not well understood, but complex systems creating, or greatly improving themselves was well outside the range of empirical observation, then as now. While seeming improbable, the improbability was difficult to quantify because the workings of life were an almost complete mystery; a huge "black box" into which the problems of the theory could be swept. This is an "evolution of the gaps", the confidence that future discoveries would explain the problems away.
One problem recognized from the start even by Darwin himself is the discontinuous nature of the fossil record. While gradual transitions could be documented from about the "family" level downward, above that level the types seemed to all appear suddenly, without transitional forms from previous families. One would expect a continuous line of each species back to the earliest macroscopic antecedents, if the theory were true. Darwin notes the problem in his book:
"Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory. The explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record." Charles Darwin (1859), The Origin of Species, p. 280.
"Evolution of the gaps", pesky evidence! But he was confident that the gaps would be filled by more transitional forms as the fossil record became more complete. (Update 2018-It hasn't)
Another aspect of the fossil record which was found rather early and does not fit well with Darwin's theory is the Cambrian Explosion.
<link deleted>
The Cambrian explosion or Cambrian radiation was the relatively short span event, occurring approximately 541 million years ago in the Cambrian period, during which most major animal phyla appeared, as indicated by the fossil record. Lasting for about the next 20–25 million years, it resulted in the divergence of most modern metazoan phyla. Additionally, the event was accompanied by major diversification of other organisms. Prior to the Cambrian explosion, most organisms were simple, composed of individual cells occasionally organized into colonies. Over the following 70 to 80 million years, the rate of diversification accelerated by an order of magnitude and the diversity of life began to resemble that of today. Almost all present animal phyla appeared during this period.
It is difficult to see, with a supposed random distribution of mutations, why such a great variety of phyla would appear in such a short period, in sharp contrast to previous and subsequent periods. This has still not been adequately explained.
More and more thru the decades has been discovered about the workings of life, and at each turn the many problems in detail were swept into the black box of the yet unknown. But at long last we are opening the last box, molecular biology, and instead of explanations for old problems we are discovering new and apparently intractable problems with the problem theory. We find not just staggering absolute complexity, but indeed many examples of "irreducible complexity": complex systems with many interrelated components which are not amenable to explanation by gradual change plus natural selection, because the system needs ALL the components to convey any benefit at all, and thus be selected for. In order to provide any survival benefit, the whole system must appear in one swell foop AT THE SAME TIME and integrated. The improbability of this is far worse than the mere product of the improbabilities of the component subsystems.
<link deleted>
For other biochemical problems with the evolutionary view of the origins of life, see:
Stephen Mayer - Signature in the Cell
<continued>
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@rockysandman5489
This by no means exhausts the evidence for Theism and Christianity. I haven't completed writing up a summary of such evidence. I have taken a chronological approach to writing it up, starting with cosmology and biology (I am not done with biology), and I plan to continue through archeology, history, and sociology, ethics, etc. This is what I've written up so far. In the meanwhile, if you are interested in pursuing the evidence further, I can suggest a few resources:
C S Lewis - Mere Christianity - An introduction to the actual claims of Christianity (most non-Christians today have a distorted view)
Criticism of Scientism by Agnostics:
David Berlinski - The Deniable Darwin and Other Essays
- The Devil's Delusion - From the cover blurb:
Has anyone provided a proof of God’s inexistence? Not even close.
Has quantum cosmology explained the emergence of the universe or why it is here? Not even close.
Have the sciences explained why our universe seems to be fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life? Not even close.
Are physicists and biologists willing to believe in anything so long as it is not religious thought? Close enough.
Has rationalism in moral thought provided us with an understanding of what is good, what is right, and what is moral? Not close enough.
Has secularism in the terrible twentieth century been a force for good? Not even close to being close.
Is there a narrow and oppressive orthodoxy of thought and opinion within the sciences? Close enough.
Does anything in the sciences or in their philosophy justify the claim that religious belief is irrational? Not even ballpark.
Is scientific atheism a frivolous exercise in intellectual contempt? Dead on.
Atheists or agnostics who have converted to theism and/or Christianity by examining the evidence:
Lee Strobel - The Case for Christ
C. S. Lewis - Surprised by Joy
Hugh Ross - (many titles)
Anthony Flew - There is a God
Dr. Ed Feser - The Road from Atheism
Justin Brooke
David Wood - (seen on Bit Chute formerly YT Acts 17 Apologetics)
Dr. Michael Guillen
Dr. Michael Egnor
Jordan Monge
Peter Byrom
Abraham Lincoln – - "Abraham Lincoln’s Journey From Atheism To Christianity"
Bill Hayden – Australia’s second longest-serving Governor-General and was a renowned atheist for all of his life. Bill Received Jesus At 85
Rosaria Champagne Butterfield: Former Lesbian, Feminist, Atheist Professor. In what she describes as a train wreck, Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, a former tenured professor of English and women’s studies at Syracuse University, shares the incredible story of her journey to Christ, laying aside lesbianism, feminism and Atheism.
Michael McIntyre – Multi-Millionaire Atheist Who Hated God But Now, He Radically Accepts Jesus
Jennifer Fulwiler, Leah Libresco and Holly Ordway – Three Powerful women whose intellectual journey led to their conversion from atheism to Christianity.
Dr. Wayne Rossiter – Former atheist biologist who once described himself as a “staunch and cantankerous atheist” who sought every opportunity to destroy Christianity where it stood.
Jim Warner Wallace – Was a Smart Cold-Case homicide atheist detective who worked for the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD).
Dr. Greg Lehman – One day, he finished a medical consultation with his usual “Do you have any questions?” The walk-in patient stared at him and asked: “Have you accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as you personal Savior?”
Philosopher Edward Feser: The Associate Professor of Philosophy at Pasadena City College, previously a Visiting Assistant Professor at Loyola Marymount University, and a Visiting Scholar at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center. Feser speaks on how Studying Philosophy Led him To God.
Prof. Sarah Irving-Stonebraker – Professor Sarah Irving-Stonebraker is a Senior Lecturer in Modern European History at Western Sydney University in Australia.
In her article,“How Oxford and Peter Singer drove me from atheism to Jesus,” Sarah shares the incredible story that led her to Jesus Christ. Dr. Peter Singer is a fervent atheist and a champion of the idea that some human lives have little or no value. I am sure that if he learned he helped “drive” a fellow atheist to Jesus, he would be more than a little annoyed.
See Also: Christianity Is Spreading In My Country: Iran’s Intelligence Minister Laments
Howard Storm – Atheist Professor whose Near-death Experience drew him to Jesus Christ.
Ronald Dabdoub – As an atheist, Ronald wanted to know the truth about God. For 30 days he asked God to prove his existence with more than words. Days later, he had a vision of Jesus Christ, and that was the start of a new life for him.
Barak Lurie – Former Jewish atheist and profitable real estate/ business lawyer who found Jesus as he searched for truth. Author of Atheism Kills.
Caleb Kaltenbach: Former Atheist Raised By Gay Parents, but he embraced Jesus and today he’s a preacher of Jesus Christ.
Paul Ernest – Former Atheist Scholar, Paul Ernest has always been a deep thinker. Whether it was science or philosophy, he was the one constantly asking “Why” and “How?”.
Alexis Mason – A former Militant Atheist
Steve Tillman – Former atheist leader who did everything to suppress the idea of God.
Dezmond Boudreaux – “The whole time I was searching for peace and truth, but could never find it.” “When I found Christ, that’s when I truly found what I was looking for.” – Dezmond.
Guillaume Bignon – A Staunch Atheist Who Hated God, Visited Church “As One Visits A Zoo To See Exotic Animals” But Then God Caught Him.
Jessica Jenkins – Was a devout atheist who believed in science and the theory of evolution.
Miracles:
C. S Lewis - Miracles
Craig Keenor - Miracles
Eric Metaxas - Miracles
David Brooks - Neural Buddhist
Apologists:
C. S. Lewis
John Lennox
Josh McDowell
Hugh Ross
YouTube
Red Pen Logic
Inspiring Philosophy
I would stay away from Ken Hamm of Answers From Genesis, and Dr. Duane Gish and the Institute for Creation research. They seem to me to be supporting good conclusions by bad arguments. Sort of the way you atheists must think of Richard Carrier. Whether you choose to examine the evidence or not, the notion that Theists have no evidence and aren't interested in evidence had better be dropped.
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@DucaTech "what's SpaceX funding coming from?"
In the future, Starlink. The only funding for Starship they got from NASA is a pittance for the lunar variant and for a development of LEO refueling. SpaceX was the low bidder for delivering crew to the lunar surface (by a long shot). SpaceX is investing in Starship with the short term goal of cheaply deploying the rest of the Starlink constellation. Deploying Starlink sats with Falcons is a stopgap. According to what I have heard, Musk is gambling the whole company on Starship working. The only lunar base NASA plans to build is planned in cooperation with SpaceX (among other contractors).
SpaceX has a fixed price contract from NASA for the crew and cargo variants of Dragon (for less than they paid Boeing to fail), and they are swallowing up launch contracts, scientific, commercial, and military, by underselling other providers with reusability, so he has a revenue stream, but he's put all his chips on black. Basically, he knows that the old guard aerospace contractor is the "house" in this game, and the house wins all ties. He can't wait for Boeing to catch up with him on reusability, because if they can come close to his price, Boeing's political contacts will secure the contracts (at least the government contracts). He has to stay way ahead to survive.
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@5StarHeneral Bulverism is the fallacy they teach in schools nowadays instead of critical thinking. You posit an irrational or ignoble CAUSE for the opponent's position, by which you seek to excuse yourself and your reader for dismissing the opponent's arguments without thought:
Quote from Bulverism by C. S. Lewis:
You must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong. The modern method is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became so silly.
In the course of the last fifteen years I have found this vice so common that I have had to invent a name for it. I call it "Bulverism". Some day I am going to write the biography of its imaginary inventor, Ezekiel Bulver, whose destiny was determined at the age of five when he heard his mother say to his father — who had been maintaining that two sides of a triangle were together greater than a third — "Oh you say that because you are a man." "At that moment", E. Bulver assures us, "there flashed across my opening mind the great truth that refutation is no necessary part of argument. Assume that your opponent is wrong, and explain his error, and the world will be at your feet. Attempt to prove that he is wrong or (worse still) try to find out whether he is wrong or right, and the natural dynamism of our age will thrust you to the wall." That is how Bulver became one of the makers of the Twentieth Century.
Suppose I think, after doing my accounts, that I have a large balance at the bank. And suppose you want to find out whether this belief of mine is "wishful thinking." You can never come to any conclusion by examining my psychological condition. Your only chance of finding out is to sit down and work through the sum yourself. When you have checked my figures, then, and then only, will you know whether I have that balance or not. If you find my arithmetic correct, then no amount of vapouring about my psychological condition can be anything but a waste of time. If you find my arithmetic wrong, then it may be relevant to explain psychologically how I came to be so bad at my arithmetic, and the doctrine of the concealed wish will become relevant — but only after you have yourself done the sum and discovered me to be wrong on purely arithmetical grounds. It is the same with all thinking and all systems of thought. If you try to find out which are tainted by speculating about the wishes of the thinkers, you are merely making a fool of yourself. You must first find out on purely logical grounds which of them do, in fact, break down as arguments. Afterwards, if you like, go on and discover the psychological causes of the error.
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@jaredcrenshaw7665 "the reason why the allies won WWII is because the Soviet Union obliterated the Nazis in the battle of Stalingrad."
The reason why the Soviets squeaked by in Stalingrad was because they were already receiving aid in bulk from the western allies. The US declared war on December 11, 1941. The turning point of Germany's eastern front, prior to which Germany was totally on the offensive was the Battle of Stalingrad (23 August 1942 - 2 February 1943). By the time the Battle of Stalingrad had even begun, the US and UK were already shipping aid in bulk to the Soviet Union, mostly food a first, but constantly trucks and fuel, shipped in by Anglo-American convoys fighting through the German attempt at blockade. The defenders of Stalingrad almost starved as it was, and would certainly have starved without that aid.
By the time the USSR had turned to the offensive, The US had been supplying, and continued to supply, Sherman tanks in vast numbers to all the allies including the Soviet Union. The UK also supplied the USSR with some tanks. The US and the UK also supplied the Soviets with combat and logistics aircraft. 90% of the trucks supporting the Soviet offensive logistical effort were western trucks, and the bulk of the fuel was from the US & UK as well. Without that aid the Soviet offensive would not have been possible logistically or materially.
Shortly after the US declaration of war, the US sent ground forces to aid the British effort to push the Axis powers out of Northern Africa. In November of 1942, the US opened an African front of its own in Operation Torch. The Anglo-American offensive pushed the Axis out of Africa, and deprived them of their main source of oil. This began well before the end of the Stalingrad battle and the start of the Soviet offensive, and paved the way for the subsequent Anglo-American invasions of Sicily and Italy, which took Italy out of the war. This also caused Hitler to divert forces from his eastern to his southern front during the pivotal period.
Moreover, any analysis of the USSRs contribution to the allied war effort is incomplete without factoring in their prior contribution to the Axis war effort. The first Soviet intervention in events was its joint operation with the Reich in the conquest of Poland, accompanied by the non-aggression pact between the USSR and Nazi Germany. Not only that, but the USSR was supporting the Reich with its propaganda and vast amounts of material aid shipped across Poland by rail. While the US was already becoming the Arsenal of Democracy by sending material aid to the UK prior to the declaration of war, the USSR was simultaneously becoming the Arsenal of Despotism by sending material aid to Hitler. The courage of the Soviet peoples in the latter part of the war was commendable, but a complete analysis of the net Soviet contribution to the war must take into account that the problem the USSR helped solve was largely a problem they helped create. The USSR didn't join the allies until they had to do so to survive, and they wouldn't have survived without allied help.
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Trevor Brannon "Real Socialism is Germany 1933-1945. 12 years not a Slave."
There is not a dimes worth of difference between Nazism and communism. Both commies and Nazis will:
Divide the public and foster hate along class/religious/gender/class lines.
Segregate.
Central plan the economy.
Nationalize the press.
End freedom of speech.
Confiscate weapons.
Persecute all non state sponsored religions.
End all civil rights, including the rights enumerated in the US Constitution (and the Magna Carta).
Evict innocent citizens from their homes.
Mobilize the apparatus of law and tax enforcement against their political enemies.
Slander, imprison, and murder their political enemies.
Eliminate or absorb all public organizations.
Replace commercial entertainment media with a boring stream of propaganda.
That, fool, IS slavery and it was the lot of the GERMAN people in the Nazi regime. What they did to others was worse. The minor, insignificant differences between communism and Nazism are only important to communists and Nazis, not to anybody who loves freedom. You won't distract us from our fight for freedom with your internal socialist squabble over who should be our master.
"He is in great fear, not knowing what mighty one may suddenly appear, wielding the Ring, and assailing him with war, seeking to cast him down and take his place. That we should wish to cast him down and have no one in his place is not a thought that occurs to his mind."-J.R.R. Tolkien, "Lord of the Rings"
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Yea, the pieces are all in place, the ubiquitous surveillance, the Newspeak, the censorship, "refs nonpersons", "mutability of the past", TVs that watch you, the "two minutes hate" at our workplaces (only longer), the Big Lie gaslighting: ‘War Is Peace. Freedom Is Slavery. Ignorance Is Strength.’
But they haven't nailed us down yet. In the final stage, they can't depend on deception alone. One can't ultimately be a total despot in secret. They aren't really trying to fool us anymore. They are trying to DEMORALIZE us. They want a situation where all of us betray everybody else. Totalitarianism requires a state of affairs where almost everybody KNOWS they're being oppressed and lied to, but nobody dares SAY it.
Galadriel:
The Quest stands upon the edge of a knife. Stray but a little, and it will fail, to the ruin of all. Yet hope remains while the Company is true.
Aragorn:
By all that you hold dear on this good earth, I bid you stand, Men of the West!
G, K. Chesterton -
“Truths turn into dogmas the instant that they are disputed. Thus every man who utters a doubt defines a religion. And the skepticism of our time does not really destroy the beliefs, rather it creates them; gives them their limits and their plain and defiant shape. We who are Liberals once held Liberalism lightly as a truism. Now it has been disputed, and we hold it fiercely as a faith. We who believe in patriotism once thought patriotism to be reasonable, and thought little more about it. Now we know it to be unreasonable, and know it to be right. We who are Christians never knew the great philosophic common sense which inheres in that mystery until the anti-Christian writers pointed it out to us. The great march of mental destruction will go on. Everything will be denied. Everything will become a creed. It is a reasonable position to deny the stones in the street; it will be a religious dogma to assert them. It is a rational thesis that we are all in a dream; it will be a mystical sanity to say that we are all awake. Fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer. We shall be left defending, not only the incredible virtues and sanities of human life, but something more incredible still, this huge impossible universe which stares us in the face. We shall fight for visible prodigies as if they were invisible. We shall look on the impossible grass and the skies with a strange courage. We shall be of those who have seen and yet have believed.”
Puddlegum:
"One word, Ma'am," he said, coming back from the fire; limping, because of the pain. "One word. All you've been saying is quite right, I shouldn't wonder. I'm a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won't deny any of what you said. But there's one thing more to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things – trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that's a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We're just babies making up a game, if you're right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That's why I'm going to stand by the play-world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we're leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that's a small loss if the world's as dull a place as you say."
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@bjb7587 "who told you that progressives want to control everyone?"
"By their fruits ye shall know them." I'm not sure that you really know the history of that word in western and particularly in US politics. Etymologically, it ought to mean being in favor of human progress, but it was first used by the Democrats in the Jim Crow days. It meant Socialism, Eugenics, and Jim Crow laws. Woodrow Wilson was a "progressive", on his watch the first film shown in the White House was the KKK promoting film "Birth of a Nation". He is credited with revitalizing the KKK as the enforcement arm of the Democrat Party. FDR was a progressive, he and Mussolini publicly admired one another, and he agreed to block anti-lynching federal legislation in exchange for southern congressmen's votes for the New Deal, and appointed a Clan officer to the Supreme Court. Democrat support for eugenics has been swept under the historical rug since "Nazis gave eugenics a bad name." It was all the rage in the first third of the 20th century, all "evolutionary" and "scientific". Margaret Sanger was a prominent eugenicist, who leaves as her legacy the organization she founded, Planned Parenthood, furthering eugenics by concentrating abortion clinics and propaganda in racial minority neighborhoods. Southern "progressive" legislation was the blueprint for early legislation discriminating against Jews in Germany (before the actual "final solution").
Nowadays the progressives seek to make an "end run" around the First Amendment through social media censorship. Thanks to Elon Musk, Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, and the Twitter Files, we now know that agencies of the federal government were unconstitutionally involved in this. The side that seeks to resolve a dispute of fact by the use of force is the obscurantist side, every time. This is how you know that you're the bad guy.
The first gun control laws were sold as measures to disarm racial and ethnic minorities, and the NRA worked hand in hand with minority organizations to fight them. "Progressives" are still pushing gun control, though they claim to be doing the same thing for different reasons now. Progressives have pushed various measures that have weakened the "due process" provisions of the remainder of the Bill of Rights. Overall, that's the whole Bill of Rights you're attacking and undermining, start to finish.
Your party is echoing the Nazis point for point. The Black Bloc is the Brown Shirts. The "mostly peaceful" riots they fueled, funded and armed by leftist billionaires, is Kristallnacht. Jan 6 is the Reichstag fire. It's all there, including your racial segregation, prejudice and racial and political slander and hate, using government power to suppress and terrorize political opposition, moving to restrict gun ownership and possession, locking down state control of businesses and the economy, media censorship, using schools as political indoctrination centers, mobilizing taxpayer money for the production of partizan propaganda, abortion and euthanasia; all straight out of the Nazi playbook, including your economic program.
Tax cuts are not authoritarian. Deregulation is not authoritarian. Free speech is not authoritarian. The right to keep and bear arms is not authoritarian. Freedom of religion is not authoritarian. Criticism of a government lapdog corporate media is not authoritarian. Speaking the truth to power in the face of persecution is not authoritarian. Opposition to the firing of employees, the cutoff of their access to funds or commerce, violence against their persons and property, and the restriction of their communication on the basis of their political beliefs is not authoritarian. Republicans have always been the party of freedom and equality under the law. We're on the freedom side of every issue except harming children, and you shouldn't be free to do that. All of these things are the diametric opposite of authoritarian. Conservatism is anti-authoritarian fundamentally and point by point. Leftism is authoritarian fundamentally and point by point.
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"When you say with a blanket statement that all Palestinian supporters are Hamas supporters, then I question your ability to be impartial and look at this issue from an objective point of view."
He said the exact opposite of that, plain as day. When you hear one thing can claim to hear the opposite, then I question your ability to be impartial and look at this issue from an objective point of view.
"Hamas is using people as a human shields...What is equally horrifying is that the IDF are willing to bomb those civilians regardless"
Regardless of what? Your notion of a "good" outcome is for Hamas' "horrendous" plan to work perfectly. Checkmate! Hamas keeps killing Jews until there are no Jews left. No national self defense has ever been pursued without civilian casualties. The Second World war was not by a long shot. To say that you are for a nation's self defense but not if it involves civilian casualties is simply to contradict yourself. Evil actors will always push you to a binary choice by seeking to use your ideals against you. It is in every playbook: the Koran, Machiavelli, Lenin, Hitler, the Palestinian National Covenant, Saul Alinsky. Freedom still exists because free men have passed this moral test again and again. As soon as we fail it the world will be enslaved and atrocities will abound without check and with no more protest than the screams of the crushed.
"All they want is for Palestinian people to have the same basic freedoms that Israeli people have; they do not have that, in Gaza or in the West Bank."
In the West Bank, which is governed by Israel, Arab Israelis have full rights of Israeli citizens; rights which Arabs have nowhere else in the Middle East and in no Islamic state worldwide. Voting rights, freedom of religion, women can drive and don't have to wrap themselves in a parka in tropical heat or be accompanies by a male protector from her family, rights of sexual preference, etc., the whole shebang. The only major difference is that Arab Israelis are exempt from the compulsory military service, though they can volunteer, and many do. In the Gaza strip, ruled by Hamas, Arabs suffer the most oppressive government in the Middle East, with none of the above freedoms.
PERSONAL freedom is the only meaningful sort. "Group freedom" is invariably a smoke screen for tyranny. Taiwan votes to maintain its democracy, group freedom says mainland China owns them because they're Chinese. Northern Ireland votes to remain in the UK, group freedom says Ireland owns them because they're Irish. Many Blacks in the US vote Republican, Joe Biden and many other Democrats say the Democrat Party owns them because they're Black. (My! That sounds familiar!) Hitler says the destiny of Germany is important and Germans are being oppressed, he proceeds to steal other countries and murder racial minorities.
Legitimate political organizations group to protect personal freedom from threats. That is the lone and essential purpose of government: to FORCE people to mind their own business. Because left to themselves, THEY WILL NOT.
" 'river to sea', this is now a decisive phrase that will take on many meanings"
Did you mean "divisive"? Check out Gazan school curriculum to see what it means to Hamas. Many of the protestors were indoctrinated in the same ideology. Regardless of what the protestors mean (and I suppose many are as naive as you), genocide would be the result of the victory of the side they're supporting.
"I do not believe Jewish people have anything to fear from 99.9% of the people protesting for Palestinians."
Jews are being beaten with sticks by these harmless puppies and sent to the hospital. The violence is well underway. At a protest in a prominent US campus a Jewish student was beaten and no action was taken by the campus security or police. They used a silhouette logo of the RING SAIL PARACHUTE ATTACKERS to make clear their support FOR THE ATTACK itself, not just the "Palestinian cause", if any. Australian pro-pal-prots chanted "GAS THE JEWS"!
"I believe any attacks on Jewish people currently, are being perpetrated by genuine anti-Semites (a-S), or fools being coerced by a-S. "
A quorum of pro-Palestinian protestors are as "genuine" as one could want. At this point there are far more imported pro-Palestinian radicals than home-grown (a-S) in the US. The latter haven't been able to accomplish much out in the open to this day, and most, though willing enough to use the "Palestinian cause" to make (a-S) hay, they don't really care about it and if the Israelis and Palestinians wiped each other out they would cheer and eat popcorn. They don't have the power to coerce anyone.
"The only way to fix this is for everybody to push for a ceasefire and to support the rights of the Palestinian people."
That didn't work the last fourty'leven times it was tried, yet you remain confident it will work this time. There is NOTHING you can offer the Palestinian radicals, BY EVERY OBJECTIVE METRIC A MAJORITY, which they haven't already received or been offered and REJECTED multiple times, short of their repeatedly stated, indoctrinated, documented, ratified, and acted upon goal of the obliteration of the Jewish state and all who live there. Don't believe what they say in English to the foreign press. Believe what they say in Arabic among themselves and what they act upon.
The Palestinians will never be free until they are liberated from their ACTUAL oppressors, the Islamic militants.
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@wifatsabitah9738 "The arguments when you cant answer with facts"
He cites sources, you respond with Bulverism. Bulverism is the fallacy they teach in schools nowadays instead of critical thinking. You posit an irrational or ignoble CAUSE for the opponent's position, by which you seek to excuse yourself and your reader for dismissing the opponent's arguments without thought:
Quote from Bulverism by C. S. Lewis:
You must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong. The modern method is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became so silly.
In the course of the last fifteen years I have found this vice so common that I have had to invent a name for it. I call it "Bulverism". Some day I am going to write the biography of its imaginary inventor, Ezekiel Bulver, whose destiny was determined at the age of five when he heard his mother say to his father — who had been maintaining that two sides of a triangle were together greater than a third — "Oh you say that because you are a man." "At that moment", E. Bulver assures us, "there flashed across my opening mind the great truth that refutation is no necessary part of argument. Assume that your opponent is wrong, and explain his error, and the world will be at your feet. Attempt to prove that he is wrong or (worse still) try to find out whether he is wrong or right, and the natural dynamism of our age will thrust you to the wall." That is how Bulver became one of the makers of the Twentieth Century.
Suppose I think, after doing my accounts, that I have a large balance at the bank. And suppose you want to find out whether this belief of mine is "wishful thinking." You can never come to any conclusion by examining my psychological condition. Your only chance of finding out is to sit down and work through the sum yourself. When you have checked my figures, then, and then only, will you know whether I have that balance or not. If you find my arithmetic correct, then no amount of vapouring about my psychological condition can be anything but a waste of time. If you find my arithmetic wrong, then it may be relevant to explain psychologically how I came to be so bad at my arithmetic, and the doctrine of the concealed wish will become relevant — but only after you have yourself done the sum and discovered me to be wrong on purely arithmetical grounds. It is the same with all thinking and all systems of thought. If you try to find out which are tainted by speculating about the wishes of the thinkers, you are merely making a fool of yourself. You must first find out on purely logical grounds which of them do, in fact, break down as arguments. Afterwards, if you like, go on and discover the psychological causes of the error.
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@Erik Dayne
"A true journalist wouldn’t give a bigot a platform in the first place, but these days most people are more concerned with getting clicks than doing the right thing."
@red hammer
@Erik Dayne "sorry, im not getting what u mean"
He means that journalists should be auxiliary censors for state propaganda. Their calling is not to inform, but to sequester information on the basis of an ideological filter. I am sure the "bigot" part is confusing, because nothing Peterson says comes within a light year of prejudice, but to the brainwashed or self-serving leftist Ideologue "bigot" is what you call a political opponent who has eviscerated your propaganda. It is a form of Bulverism. Instead of engaging ones opponent's arguments, one posits an ignoble or irrational motive for his views to excuse one and one's readers for dismissing those arguments without analysis:
Quote from Bulverism by C. S. Lewis:
You must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong. The modern method is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became so silly.
In the course of the last fifteen years I have found this vice so common that I have had to invent a name for it. I call it "Bulverism". Some day I am going to write the biography of its imaginary inventor, Ezekiel Bulver, whose destiny was determined at the age of five when he heard his mother say to his father — who had been maintaining that two sides of a triangle were together greater than a third — "Oh you say that because you are a man." "At that moment", E. Bulver assures us, "there flashed across my opening mind the great truth that refutation is no necessary part of argument. Assume that your opponent is wrong, and explain his error, and the world will be at your feet. Attempt to prove that he is wrong or (worse still) try to find out whether he is wrong or right, and the natural dynamism of our age will thrust you to the wall." That is how Bulver became one of the makers of the Twentieth Century.
Suppose I think, after doing my accounts, that I have a large balance at the bank. And suppose you want to find out whether this belief of mine is "wishful thinking." You can never come to any conclusion by examining my psychological condition. Your only chance of finding out is to sit down and work through the sum yourself. When you have checked my figures, then, and then only, will you know whether I have that balance or not. If you find my arithmetic correct, then no amount of vapouring about my psychological condition can be anything but a waste of time. If you find my arithmetic wrong, then it may be relevant to explain psychologically how I came to be so bad at my arithmetic, and the doctrine of the concealed wish will become relevant — but only after you have yourself done the sum and discovered me to be wrong on purely arithmetical grounds. It is the same with all thinking and all systems of thought. If you try to find out which are tainted by speculating about the wishes of the thinkers, you are merely making a fool of yourself. You must first find out on purely logical grounds which of them do, in fact, break down as arguments. Afterwards, if you like, go on and discover the psychological causes of the error.
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@RonJohn63 <continued from previous post>
Also, from:
< link deleted so the site won't auto shadow delete the post >
Almost everything about the basic structure of the universe--for example, the fundamental laws and parameters of physics and the initial distribution of matter and energy--is balanced on a razor's edge for life to occur. As the eminent Princeton physicist Freeman Dyson notes, "There are many . . . lucky accidents in physics. Without such accidents, water could not exist as liquid, chains of carbon atoms could not form complex organic molecules, and hydrogen atoms could not form breakable bridges between molecules" (p. 251)--in short, life as we know it would be impossible.
Scientists call this extraordinary balancing of the parameters of physics and the initial conditions of the universe the "fine-tuning of the cosmos." It has been extensively discussed by philosophers, theologians, and scientists, especially since the early 1970s, with hundreds of articles and dozens of books written on the topic. Today, it is widely regarded as offering by far the most persuasive current argument for the existence of God. For example, theoretical physicist and popular science writer Paul Davies--whose early writings were not particularly sympathetic to theism--claims that with regard to basic structure of the universe, "the impression of design is overwhelming" (Davies, 1988, p. 203). Similarly, in response to the life-permitting fine-tuning of the nuclear resonances responsible for the oxygen and carbon synthesis in stars, the famous astrophysicist Sir Fred Hoyle declares that
I do not believe that any scientists who examined the evidence would fail to draw the inference that the laws of nuclear physics have been deliberately designed with regard to the consequences they produce inside stars. If this is so, then my apparently random quirks have become part of a deep-laid scheme. If not then we are back again at a monstrous sequence of accidents. [Fred Hoyle, in Religion and the Scientists, 1959; quoted in Barrow and Tipler, p. 22]
A few examples of this fine-tuning are listed below:
1. If the initial explosion of the big bang had differed in strength by as little as 1 part in 1060, the universe would have either quickly collapsed back on itself, or expanded too rapidly for stars to form. In either case, life would be impossible. [See Davies, 1982, pp. 90-91. (As John Jefferson Davis points out (p. 140), an accuracy of one part in 10^60 can be compared to firing a bullet at a one-inch target on the other side of the observable universe, twenty billion light years away, and hitting the target.)
2. Calculations indicate that if the strong nuclear force, the force that binds protons and neutrons together in an atom, had been stronger or weaker by as little as 5%, life would be impossible. (Leslie, 1989, pp. 4, 35; Barrow and Tipler, p. 322.)
3. Calculations by Brandon Carter show that if gravity had been stronger or weaker by 1 part in 10 to the 40th power, then life-sustaining stars like the sun could not exist. This would most likely make life impossible. (Davies, 1984, p. 242.)
4. If the neutron were not about 1.001 times the mass of the proton, all protons would have decayed into neutrons or all neutrons would have decayed into protons, and thus life would not be possible. (Leslie, 1989, pp. 39-40 )
5. If the electromagnetic force were slightly stronger or weaker, life would be impossible, for a variety of different reasons. (Leslie, 1988, p. 299.)
Imaginatively, one could think of each instance of fine-tuning as a radio dial: unless all the dials are set exactly right, life would be impossible. Or, one could think of the initial conditions of the universe and the fundamental parameters of physics as a dart board that fills the whole galaxy, and the conditions necessary for life to exist as a small one-foot wide target: unless the dart hits the target, life would be impossible. The fact that the dials are perfectly set, or the dart has hit the target, strongly suggests that someone set the dials or aimed the dart, for it seems enormously improbable that such a coincidence could have happened by chance.
References
Barrow, John and Tipler, Frank. The Anthropic Cosmological Principle. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.
Davies, Paul. The Accidental Universe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.
____________. Superforce: The Search for a Grand Unified Theory of Nature. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984.
____________. The Cosmic Blueprint: New Discoveries in Nature's Creative Ability to Order the Universe. New York, Simon and Schuster, 1988.
Davis, John Jefferson. "The Design Argument, Cosmic "Fine-tuning," and the Anthropic Principle." The International Journal of Philosophy of Religion.
Dirac, P. A. M. "The evolution of the physicist's picture of nature." Scientific American, May 1963.
Hacking, Ian. The Emergence of Probability: A Philosophical Study of Early Ideas About Probability, Induction and Statistical Inference. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975.
Leslie, John. "How to Draw Conclusions From a Fine-Tuned Cosmos." In Robert Russell, et. al., eds., Physics, Philosophy and Theology: A Common Quest for Understanding. Vatican City State: Vatican Observatory Press, pp. 297-312, 1988.
____________. Universes. New York: Routledge, 1989.
Plantinga, Alvin. Warrant and Proper Function. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Sklar, Lawrence. Physics and Chance: Philosophical Issues in the Foundation of Statistical Mechanics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Smart, J. J. C. "Laws of Nature and Cosmic Coincidence", The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 35, No. 140.
Smith, George. "Atheism: The Case Against God." Reprinted in An Anthology of Atheism and Rationalism, edited by Gordon Stein, Prometheus Press, 1980.
Smith, Quentin. "World Ensemble Explanations." Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 67, 1986.
Swinburne, Richard. An Introduction to Confirmation Theory. London: Methuen and Co. Ltd, 1973.
Van Fraassen, Bas. Laws and Symmetry. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.
Weatherford, Roy. Foundations of Probability Theory. Boston, MA: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982.
/end citation
<more about fine tuning in next post>
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@RonJohn63 <cont'd>
Another list of cosmic fine tuning dials from:
< link deleted >
N, the ratio of the strength of electromagnetism to the strength of gravity for a pair of protons, is approximately 1036. According to Rees, if it were significantly smaller, only a small and short-lived universe could exist.[12]
Epsilon (ε), a measure of the nuclear efficiency of fusion from hydrogen to helium, is 0.007: when four nucleons fuse into helium, 0.007 (0.7%) of their mass is converted to energy. The value of ε is in part determined by the strength of the strong nuclear force.[13] If ε were 0.006, only hydrogen could exist, and complex chemistry would be impossible. According to Rees, if it were above 0.008, no hydrogen would exist, as all the hydrogen would have been fused shortly after the big bang. Other physicists disagree, calculating that substantial hydrogen remains as long as the strong force coupling constant increases by less than about 50%.[10][12]
Omega (Ω), commonly known as the density parameter, is the relative importance of gravity and expansion energy in the Universe. It is the ratio of the mass density of the Universe to the "critical density" and is approximately 1. If gravity were too strong compared with dark energy and the initial metric expansion, the universe would have collapsed before life could have evolved. On the other side, if gravity were too weak, no stars would have formed.[12][14]
Lambda (λ), commonly known as the cosmological constant, describes the ratio of the density of dark energy to the critical energy density of the universe, given certain reasonable assumptions such as positing that dark energy density is a constant. In terms of Planck units, and as a natural dimensionless value, the cosmological constant, λ, is on the order of 10−122.[15] This is so small that it has no significant effect on cosmic structures that are smaller than a billion light-years across. If the cosmological constant were not extremely small, stars and other astronomical structures would not be able to form.[12]
Q, the ratio of the gravitational energy required to pull a large galaxy apart to the energy equivalent of its mass, is around 10−5. If it is too small, no stars can form. If it is too large, no stars can survive because the universe is too violent, according to Rees.[12]
D, the number of spatial dimensions in spacetime, is 3. Rees claims that life could not exist if there were 2 or 4 dimensions of spacetime nor if any other than 1 time dimension existed in spacetime.[12]
An older example is the Hoyle state, the third-lowest energy state of the carbon-12 nucleus, with an energy of 7.656 MeV above the ground level. According to one calculation, if the state's energy were lower than 7.3 or greater than 7.9 MeV, insufficient carbon would exist to support life; furthermore, to explain the universe's abundance of carbon, the Hoyle state must be further tuned to a value between 7.596 and 7.716 MeV. A similar calculation, focusing on the underlying fundamental constants that give rise to various energy levels, concludes that the strong force must be tuned to a precision of at least 0.5%, and the electromagnetic force to a precision of at least 4%, to prevent either carbon production or oxygen production from dropping significantly.[16]
REFERENCES:
1. Rees, Martin (May 3, 2001). Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces That Shape The Universe. New York, NY: Basic Books; First American edition. p. 4.
2. Gribbin. J and Rees. M, Cosmic Coincidences: Dark Matter, Mankind, and Anthropic Cosmology p. 7, 269, 1989, ISBN 0-553-34740-3
3. Davis, Paul (2007). Cosmic Jackpot: Why Our Universe Is Just Right for Life. New York, NY: Orion Publications. p. 2. ISBN 0618592261.
4. Stephen Hawking, 1988. A Brief History of Time, Bantam Books, ISBN 0-553-05340-X, p. 7, 125.
5. Lawrence Joseph Henderson, The fitness of the environment: an inquiry into the biological significance of the properties of matter The Macmillan Company, 1913
6. R. H. Dicke (1961). "Dirac's Cosmology and Mach's Principle". Nature. 192 (4801): 440–441. Bibcode:1961Natur.192..440D. doi:10.1038/192440a0.
7. Heilbron, J. L. The Oxford guide to the history of physics and astronomy, Volume 10 2005, p. 8
8. Profile of Fred Hoyle at OPT. Optcorp.com. Retrieved on 2013-03-11.
9. Paul Davies, 1993. The Accidental Universe, Cambridge University Press, p70-71
10. MacDonald, J., and D. J. Mullan. "Big bang nucleosynthesis: The strong nuclear force meets the weak anthropic principle." Physical Review D 80.4 (2009): 043507. "Contrary to a common argument that a small increase in the strength of the strong force would lead to destruction of all hydrogen in the big bang due to binding of the diproton and the dineutron with a catastrophic impact on life as we know it, we show that provided the increase in strong force coupling constant is less than about 50% substantial amounts of hydrogen remain."
11. Abbott, Larry (1991). "The Mystery of the Cosmological Constant". Scientific American. 3 (1): 78.
12. Lemley, Brad. "Why is There Life?". Discover magazine. Retrieved 23 August 2014.
13. Morison, Ian (2013). "9.14: A universe fit for intelligent life". Introduction to astronomy and cosmology. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley. ISBN 9781118681527.
14. Sean Carroll and Michio Kaku (2014). How the Universe Works 3. End of the Universe. Discovery Channel.
15. John D. Barrow The Value of the Cosmological Constant
16. Livio, M.; Hollowell, D.; Weiss, A.; Truran, J. W. (27 July 1989). "The anthropic significance of the existence of an excited state of 12C". Nature. 340 (6231): 281–284. Bibcode:1989Natur.340..281L. doi:10.1038/340281a0.
Creationists argue that the tuning of all these "dials" in favor of life implies a tuner that favors life. This position is called the "strong anthropic principle". Critics of the strong anthropic principle propose the "weak anthropic principle". They posit that many universes exist, enough that one just happens to exist with the dials set right by chance, and therefore this is the universe in which the discussion is taking place. The problem is that those alternate universes cannot in principle be observed from this one (thus they are not empirical, but a fudge invented without evidence to avoid a conclusion the fudger doesn't like), and it is trimmed by Occam's razor, the principle of favoring the simpler answer.
The tendentiousness of the opposition to this idea is illustrated by the title and first paragraph of this article in Evolution News & Science Today :
"TO AVOID THE IMPLICATIONS OF COSMIC FINE-TUNING, A CONTINUING QUEST" "Remember, the multiverse is the currently favored prophylactic against the theistic implications of cosmic fine-tuning. So if the following sounds a bit abstruse, remember what’s at stake."
<problems with evolution follow in next post>
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@RonJohn63 <cont'd>
In 1859, Charles Darwin published "The Origin of the Species" propounding a theory that complex organisms arose gradually over eaons from simpler forms of life by the operation of natural selection on small random mutations. This was not a theory of the origin of life itself, but a theory of the generation of the vast variety of species observed today given life's original existence. He studied fossils and noted that forms existed in the past which were different from forms present. There were problems with the theory from the start. First, it is implausible on the face of it. "It just happened" is not the sort of thing one usually would classify as a "scientific explanation". The second law of thermodynamics was still new, and its implications not well understood, but complex systems creating, or greatly improving themselves was well outside the range of empirical observation, then as now. While seeming improbable, the improbability was difficult to quantify because the workings of life were an almost complete mystery; a huge "black box" into which the problems of the theory could be swept. This is an "evolution of the gaps", the confidence that future discoveries would explain the problems away.
One problem recognized from the start even by Darwin himself is the discontinuous nature of the fossil record. While gradual transitions could be documented from about the "family" level downward, above that level the types seemed to all appear suddenly, without transitional forms from previous families. One would expect a continuous line of each species back to the earliest macroscopic antecedents, if the theory were true. Darwin notes the problem in his book:
"Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory. The explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record." Charles Darwin (1859), The Origin of Species, p. 280.
"Evolution of the gaps", pesky evidence! But he was confident that the gaps would be filled by more transitional forms as the fossil record became more complete. (Update 2024-It hasn't)
Another aspect of the fossil record which was found rather early and does not fit well with Darwin's theory is the Cambrian Explosion.
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The Cambrian explosion or Cambrian radiation was the relatively short span event, occurring approximately 541 million years ago in the Cambrian period, during which most major animal phyla appeared, as indicated by the fossil record. Lasting for about the next 20–25 million years, it resulted in the divergence of most modern metazoan phyla. Additionally, the event was accompanied by major diversification of other organisms. Prior to the Cambrian explosion, most organisms were simple, composed of individual cells occasionally organized into colonies. Over the following 70 to 80 million years, the rate of diversification accelerated by an order of magnitude and the diversity of life began to resemble that of today. Almost all present animal phyla appeared during this period.
It is difficult to see, with a supposed random distribution of mutations, why such a great variety of phyla would appear in such a short period, in sharp contrast to previous and subsequent periods. This has still not been adequately explained.
More and more thru the decades has been discovered about the workings of life, and at each turn the many problems in detail were swept into the black box of the yet unknown. But at long last we are opening the last box, molecular biology, and instead of explanations for old problems we are discovering new and apparently intractable problems with the problem theory. We find not just staggering absolute complexity, but indeed many examples of "irreducible complexity": complex systems with many interrelated components which are not amenable to explanation by gradual change plus natural selection, because the system needs ALL the components to convey any benefit at all, and thus be selected for. In order to provide any survival benefit, the whole system must appear in one swell foop AT THE SAME TIME and integrated. The improbability of this is far worse than the mere product of the improbabilities of the component subsystems.
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For other biochemical problems with the evolutionary view of the origins of life, see:
Stephen Mayer - Signature in the Cell
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@RonJohn63
This by no means exhausts the evidence for Theism and Christianity. I haven't completed writing up a summary of such evidence. I have taken a chronological approach to writing it up, starting with cosmology and biology (I am not done with biology), and I plan to continue through archeology, history, and sociology, ethics, etc. This is what I've written up so far. In the meanwhile, if you are interested in pursuing the evidence further, I can suggest a few resources:
C S Lewis - Mere Christianity - An introduction to the actual claims of Christianity (most non-Christians today have a distorted view)
Criticism of Scientism by Agnostics:
David Berlinski - The Deniable Darwin and Other Essays
- The Devil's Delusion - From the cover blurb:
Has anyone provided a proof of God’s inexistence? Not even close.
Has quantum cosmology explained the emergence of the universe or why it is here? Not even close.
Have the sciences explained why our universe seems to be fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life? Not even close.
Are physicists and biologists willing to believe in anything so long as it is not religious thought? Close enough.
Has rationalism in moral thought provided us with an understanding of what is good, what is right, and what is moral? Not close enough.
Has secularism in the terrible twentieth century been a force for good? Not even close to being close.
Is there a narrow and oppressive orthodoxy of thought and opinion within the sciences? Close enough.
Does anything in the sciences or in their philosophy justify the claim that religious belief is irrational? Not even ballpark.
Is scientific atheism a frivolous exercise in intellectual contempt? Dead on.
Atheists or agnostics who have converted to theism and/or Christianity by examining the evidence:
Lee Strobel - The Case for Christ
C. S. Lewis - Surprised by Joy
Hugh Ross - (many titles)
Anthony Flew - There is a God
Dr. Ed Feser - The Road from Atheism
Justin Brooke
David Wood - (seen on Bit Chute formerly YT Acts 17 Apologetics)
Dr. Michael Guillen
Dr. Michael Egnor
Jordan Monge
Peter Byrom
Abraham Lincoln – - "Abraham Lincoln’s Journey From Atheism To Christianity"
Bill Hayden – Australia’s second longest-serving Governor-General and was a renowned atheist for all of his life. Bill Received Jesus At 85
Rosaria Champagne Butterfield: Former Lesbian, Feminist, Atheist Professor. In what she describes as a train wreck, Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, a former tenured professor of English and women’s studies at Syracuse University, shares the incredible story of her journey to Christ, laying aside lesbianism, feminism and Atheism.
Michael McIntyre – Multi-Millionaire Atheist Who Hated God But Now, He Radically Accepts Jesus
Jennifer Fulwiler, Leah Libresco and Holly Ordway – Three Powerful women whose intellectual journey led to their conversion from atheism to Christianity.
Dr. Wayne Rossiter – Former atheist biologist who once described himself as a “staunch and cantankerous atheist” who sought every opportunity to destroy Christianity where it stood.
Jim Warner Wallace – Was a Smart Cold-Case homicide atheist detective who worked for the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD).
Dr. Greg Lehman – One day, he finished a medical consultation with his usual “Do you have any questions?” The walk-in patient stared at him and asked: “Have you accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as you personal Savior?”
Philosopher Edward Feser: The Associate Professor of Philosophy at Pasadena City College, previously a Visiting Assistant Professor at Loyola Marymount University, and a Visiting Scholar at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center. Feser speaks on how Studying Philosophy Led him To God.
Prof. Sarah Irving-Stonebraker – Professor Sarah Irving-Stonebraker is a Senior Lecturer in Modern European History at Western Sydney University in Australia.
In her article,“How Oxford and Peter Singer drove me from atheism to Jesus,” Sarah shares the incredible story that led her to Jesus Christ. Dr. Peter Singer is a fervent atheist and a champion of the idea that some human lives have little or no value. I am sure that if he learned he helped “drive” a fellow atheist to Jesus, he would be more than a little annoyed.
See Also: Christianity Is Spreading In My Country: Iran’s Intelligence Minister Laments
Howard Storm – Atheist Professor whose Near-death Experience drew him to Jesus Christ.
Ronald Dabdoub – As an atheist, Ronald wanted to know the truth about God. For 30 days he asked God to prove his existence with more than words. Days later, he had a vision of Jesus Christ, and that was the start of a new life for him.
Barak Lurie – Former Jewish atheist and profitable real estate/ business lawyer who found Jesus as he searched for truth. Author of Atheism Kills.
Caleb Kaltenbach: Former Atheist Raised By Gay Parents, but he embraced Jesus and today he’s a preacher of Jesus Christ.
Paul Ernest – Former Atheist Scholar, Paul Ernest has always been a deep thinker. Whether it was science or philosophy, he was the one constantly asking “Why” and “How?”.
Alexis Mason – A former Militant Atheist
Steve Tillman – Former atheist leader who did everything to suppress the idea of God.
Dezmond Boudreaux – “The whole time I was searching for peace and truth, but could never find it.” “When I found Christ, that’s when I truly found what I was looking for.” – Dezmond.
Guillaume Bignon – A Staunch Atheist Who Hated God, Visited Church “As One Visits A Zoo To See Exotic Animals” But Then God Caught Him.
Jessica Jenkins – Was a devout atheist who believed in science and the theory of evolution.
Miracles:
C. S Lewis - Miracles
Craig Keenor - Miracles
Eric Metaxas - Miracles
David Brooks - Neural Buddhist
Apologists:
C. S. Lewis
John Lennox
Josh McDowell
Hugh Ross
YouTube
Red Pen Logic
Inspiring Philosophy
I would stay away from Ken Hamm of Answers From Genesis, and Dr. Duane Gish and the Institute for Creation research. They seem to me to be supporting good conclusions by bad arguments. Sort of the way you atheists must think of Richard Carrier. Whether you choose to examine the evidence or not, the notion that Theists have no evidence and aren't interested in evidence had better be dropped.
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@abdulahhabdalla420 There was a lot of war and killing on both sides until Protestantism got the upper hand. Like Israel with the Islamic terrorists, the Protestants couldn't talk their way to peace with somebody that wants to exterminate or enslave them. Then when Protestants were secure, they ended slavery; implemented religious freedom, political freedom, academic freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press FIRST; and thus caused the academic, scientific, technological, and material progress that followed; and most of the rest of the world hasn't caught up with it yet. John 8:32 "You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
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@ZappyOh Never in the history of mankind has an arbitrator proven more benign than the market. You imagine this arbiter as a function of government, or becoming a government. A common fallacy of utopian ideologues is that human nature is inherently good, but is being held back by some flaw in the social contract. In fact, the same flawed, imperfect, selfish, stupid nature that infests the lord, or the "capitalist", infests the arbiter. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The "capitalist" AS SUCH, can only hire or bribe. A government can do that (with other people's money), plus arrest, torture, and kill you or your family. It is incoherent to fear the former and not fear the latter. No "angel" is available to bear this power benignly.
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@brtle
You just heard an argument against equality of opportunity. To assert that it does not exist is meaningless.
The second part of your statement is Bulverism:
Quote from Bulverism by C. S. Lewis:
You must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong. The modern method is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became so silly.
In the course of the last fifteen years I have found this vice so common that I have had to invent a name for it. I call it "Bulverism". Some day I am going to write the biography of its imaginary inventor, Ezekiel Bulver, whose destiny was determined at the age of five when he heard his mother say to his father — who had been maintaining that two sides of a triangle were together greater than a third — "Oh you say that because you are a man." "At that moment", E. Bulver assures us, "there flashed across my opening mind the great truth that refutation is no necessary part of argument. Assume that your opponent is wrong, and explain his error, and the world will be at your feet. Attempt to prove that he is wrong or (worse still) try to find out whether he is wrong or right, and the natural dynamism of our age will thrust you to the wall." That is how Bulver became one of the makers of the Twentieth Century.
Suppose I think, after doing my accounts, that I have a large balance at the bank. And suppose you want to find out whether this belief of mine is "wishful thinking." You can never come to any conclusion by examining my psychological condition. Your only chance of finding out is to sit down and work through the sum yourself. When you have checked my figures, then, and then only, will you know whether I have that balance or not. If you find my arithmetic correct, then no amount of vapouring about my psychological condition can be anything but a waste of time. If you find my arithmetic wrong, then it may be relevant to explain psychologically how I came to be so bad at my arithmetic, and the doctrine of the concealed wish will become relevant — but only after you have yourself done the sum and discovered me to be wrong on purely arithmetical grounds. It is the same with all thinking and all systems of thought. If you try to find out which are tainted by speculating about the wishes of the thinkers, you are merely making a fool of yourself. You must first find out on purely logical grounds which of them do, in fact, break down as arguments. Afterwards, if you like, go on and discover the psychological causes of the error.
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fane babanu The "allies" in this scenario are regional allies. European nations do not have the long distance power projection ability to be of use in a war against China, with the possible exception of the UK. The most likely scenario for starting this sort of war is China attacking the regional allies, which must act in self preservation anyway. So European prejudices are irrelevant.
That our European allies would leave us in the lurch with respect to any Asian war can be pretty well taken for granted historically, and any realistic war gaming or strategic planning will assume thiis. In Vietnam, when we were trying to keep the Soviet Union from gaining a strategic naval base by subversion and semi-covert military force, our "European allies" were loudly proclaiming their political support for Soviet proxies, while Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, and Taiwan sent troops to help us. As far as Europe is concerned, the US exists to hold Russia at bay in Europe so they don't have to be bothered with self defense, and anything else we do is a distraction from that and shouldn't be allowed. Europeans lack empathy. Asians, Australians, Japanese, and New Zealanders aren't "people" to them and it never occurs to them to wonder how they can expect a US that abandons its Pacific Rim allies to stand by them in need.
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It is true that Hitler when he was a politician seeking office expressed certain pro-Christian statements. But in his private remarks to his officials he made it clear where he really stood as has been revealed by seized Nazi government documents and the notes of an author who planned to publish a collection of Hitler's remarks at the dinner table.
Dr Zoellner and [Catholic Bishop of Munster] Count Galen have tried to make clear to me that Christianity consists in faith in Christ as the son of God. That makes me laugh... No, Christianity is not dependent upon the Apostle's Creed... True Christianity is represented by the party, and the German people are now called by the party and especially the Fuehrer to a real Christianity... the Fuehrer is the herald of a new revelation."
— Hans Kerrl, Nazi Minister for Church Affairs, 1937
During the war Alfred Rosenberg formulated a thirty-point program for the National Reich Church, which included:
The National Reich Church claims exclusive right and control over all Churches.
The National Church is determined to exterminate foreign Christian faiths imported into Germany in the ill-omened year 800.
The National Church demands immediate cessation of the publishing and dissemination of the Bible.
The National Church will clear away from its altars all Crucifixes, Bibles, and pictures of Saints.
On the altars there must be nothing but "Mein Kampf" and to the left of the altar a sword.
Prior to the Reichstag vote for the Enabling Act under which Hitler gained legislative powers with which he went on to permanently dismantle the Weimar Republic, Hitler promised the Reichstag on 23 March 1933, that he would not interfere with the rights of the churches. However, with power secured in Germany, Hitler quickly broke this promise. Various historians have written that the goal of the Nazi Kirchenkampf (Church Struggle) entailed not only ideological struggle, but ultimately the eradication of the Churches. However, leading Nazis varied in the importance they attached to the Church Struggle.
William Shirer wrote that "under the leadership of Rosenberg, Bormann and Himmler, who were backed by Hitler, the Nazi regime intended to destroy Christianity in Germany, if it could, and substitute the old paganism of the early tribal Germanic gods and the new paganism of the Nazi extremists." During a speech on 27 October 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt revealed evidence of Hitler's plan to abolish all religions in Germany, declaring:
"Your government has in its possession another document, made in Germany by Hitler’s Government… It is a plan to abolish all existing religions—Catholic, Protestant, Mohammedan, Hindu, Buddhist, and Jewish alike. The property of all churches will be seized by the Reich and its puppets. The cross and all other symbols of religion are to be forbidden. The clergy are to be forever liquidated, silenced under penalty of the concentration camps, where even now so many fearless men are being tortured because they have placed God above Hitler."
Hitler himself possessed radical instincts in relation to the continuing conflict with the Catholic and Protestant Churches in Germany. Though he occasionally spoke of wanting to delay the Church struggle and was prepared to restrain his anti-clericalism out of political considerations, his "own inflammatory comments gave his immediate underlings all the license they needed to turn up the heat in the 'Church Struggle, confident that they were 'working towards the Fuhrer'". According to the Goebbels Diaries, Hitler hated Christianity. In an 8 April 1941 entry, Goebbels wrote "He hates Christianity, because it has crippled all that is noble in humanity."
In Bullock's assessment, though raised a Catholic, Hitler "believed neither in God nor in conscience", retained some regard for the organizational power of Catholicism, but had contempt for its central teachings, which he said, if taken to their conclusion, "would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure". (Bullock wrote.)
In Hitler's eyes, Christianity was a religion fit only for slaves; he detested its ethics in particular. Its teaching, he declared, was a rebellion against the natural law of selection by struggle and the survival of the fittest.
— Extract from Hitler: A Study in Tyranny, by Alan Bullock
Writing for Yad Vashem, the historian Michael Phayer wrote that by the latter 1930s, church officials knew that the long-term aim of Hitler was the "total elimination of Catholicism and of the Christian religion", but that given the prominence of Christianity in Germany, this was necessarily a long-term goal. According to Bullock, Hitler intended to destroy the influence of the Christian churches in Germany after the war. In his memoirs, Hitler's chief architect Albert Speer recalled that when drafting his plans for the "new Berlin", he consulted Protestant and Catholic authorities, but was "curtly informed" by Hitler's private secretary Martin Bormann that churches were not to receive building sites. Kershaw wrote that, in Hitler's scheme for the Germanization of Eastern Europe, he made clear that there would be "no place in this utopia for the Christian Churches'.
Geoffrey Blainey wrote that Hitler and his Fascist ally Mussolini were atheists. "The aggressive spread of atheism in the Soviet Union alarmed many German Christians", wrote Blainey, and with the Nazis becoming the main opponent of Communism in Germany: "[Hitler] himself saw Christianity as a temporary ally, for in his opinion 'one is either a Christian or a German'. To be both was impossible. Nazism itself was a religion, a pagan religion, and Hitler was its high priest... Its high altar [was] Germany itself and the German people, their soil and forests and language and traditions". Nonetheless, a number of early confidants of Hitler detailed the Führer's complete lack of religious belief. One close confidant, Otto Strasser, disclosed in his 1940 book, Hitler and I, that Hitler was a true disbeliever, succinctly stating: Hitler is an atheist.
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